<Full article reprinted from the Environmental Information Center. Special correspondent Lin Ying-Zhen reporting from Colombia, 2025.04.10>
When the topic of humpback whale breeding season comes up, the mind turns to Parque Nacional Natural Uramba Bahía Málaga on the eastern Pacific coast — a stretch of deep-blue ocean that should be every bit as beautiful as the western Pacific waters surrounding Taiwan. Yet when I wrapped up my time at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 16) and set off on the whale-watching journey I had been so eagerly anticipating, the scene that greeted me was deeply unsettling: an endless tide of waste and pollution, quietly eating away at what should have been a pristine shoreline.
First Encounter with Bahía Málaga: The Other Side of a Beautiful Coast
After a four-hour mountain drive from Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, followed by an hour and a half aboard a bone-rattling speedboat, I finally arrived at the celebrated humpback whale breeding ground — Parque Nacional Natural Uramba Bahía Málaga. Unfortunately, overcast skies left me with no whale sightings, only relentless and ferocious waves. So I chose instead to walk into the local village at low tide.
What I saw was this: along the estuary, there was none of the picturesque scenery I had imagined. Garbage spread across the beach with the tides, and children played among the heaps of waste. Plastic bottles, broken toothbrushes, drifting cutlery, and tilting driftwood wove together a picture entirely unlike anything I had envisioned. This debris coexists with the village's residents, woven into the fabric of daily life.
What has allowed this waste to become such an ordinary part of life in this village?
Coexisting with waste is daily life in this eastern Pacific village. Photo: Lin Ying-Zhen
Squeezed by Internal and External Environmental Pressures: A Village at the End of the Waste Trail
Rommy Schreiber, founder of Eco Pazifico — a nonprofit focused on Pacific coastal waste — answered my questions during COP 16. She explained that the Pacific coast is blanketed in jungle and mangrove forest, making access difficult and the establishment of waste collection systems nearly impossible. As a result, local residents are accustomed to tossing rubbish directly from their stilted homes; coastal dwellers, meanwhile, have long burned or buried their waste on the beach.
Beyond the lack of a recycling infrastructure, the area's remoteness and inaccessibility have made it a haven for armed groups and drug traffickers, giving rise to illegal trade and fishing that further damage the local ecosystem. Even long-haul fishing vessels from Asia have been known to dump waste here.
Carried by ocean currents, all of this debris eventually washes up on the shores of the eastern Pacific coast.
An Environmental Protection Model That Lives with the Village
To address these issues, the Colombian government launched the Zona Especialmente Protegida de Ambiente (ZEPA) — a Special Environmental Protection Zone program — in 2018. ZEPA places emphasis on the economic vitality, cultural continuity, and coastal ecology of shoreline communities. Solutions are developed with the village as the foundation, ensuring that local residents are active participants in the process. The program's scope extends beyond ecological protection to include the economic transition of village communities as a core priority. Eco Pazifico, operating under the ZEPA framework, also works to address the waste crisis along the Pacific coast.
The Special Environmental Protection Zone covers both the Pacific and Caribbean coastlines. Along the Pacific coast, livelihoods once built on fishing have been severely undermined by commercial overfishing and the influence of drug traffickers and armed groups, forcing residents to work for illegal organizations and intensifying the destruction of local ecosystems. Illegal gold mining, for example, has led to mercury contamination, river diversion, and rampant deforestation of the rainforest.
Since ZEPA came into effect in 2018, exclusive zones for traditional fishing methods have been established, prohibiting the entry of commercial fishing vessels. By last year, the protected area had grown by 74% compared to its first year. Local organizations have also revived traditional fishing practices, including the use of traps, handmade nets, and dugout canoes. To address fish preservation challenges, the government has supported the construction of refrigeration facilities, further expanding sales channels.
Most importantly, local villages participate fully in ZEPA's planning discussions, ensuring the program meets frontline needs and delivers genuinely community-centred marine protection. The initiative serves a dual purpose: safeguarding ecologically vital marine areas while improving fisherfolk livelihoods to reduce incentives for illegal activity — and ensuring that fishing village culture is preserved for future generations.
During COP 16, several sessions invited villages participating in the ZEPA program to share their experiences. Photo: Lin Ying-Zhen
Giving Residents a Sense of Purpose: Giving Plastic Waste a Second Life
With no recycling facilities or waste management systems in place, residents along the eastern Pacific coast have long resorted to burning and burying rubbish on the spot. Tourists and cargo ships alike have been known to bag their waste in plastic and throw it into the sea. Finding a way out of this waste disposal dilemma has always been an enormous challenge.
Eco Pazifico formed a beach guardian team made up primarily of local residents, tasked with gathering, collecting, washing, and sorting waste. Plastic accounts for a large proportion of what is collected. The organization has introduced solar-powered machines that shred and melt plastic, reforming it into plastic bricks. These bricks are then used to construct waste collection stations, which serve as hubs for promoting recycling and waste sorting across the village.
There are now 18 such collection stations in operation, with remaining recyclables transported away with the assistance of the navy. Thanks to door-to-door outreach campaigns, waste incineration dropped by 45% in 2023.
Schreiber hopes that in the future these bricks can be sold to other companies, generating additional income for the village and opening the door to new business models. Plans are also in the works to introduce glass crushers, expanding the range of materials that can be processed and repurposed locally.
Beyond direct action, education is equally important. Local artists create artworks from discarded materials, and these pieces have become powerful tools in outreach campaigns, communicating the importance of recycling to schools and community members alike.
Using installation art for environmental education is one of Eco Pazifico's initiatives. Image credit: Eco Pazifico
Original source: Environmental Information Center - Encountering Marine Debris on the Eastern Pacific Coast: Colombia's Village-Based Approach to Environmental Protection
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