The GraceKennedy Foundation secured a $960,000 grant from the European Union’s Everything but Arms initiative to clean up Kingston Harbor in Jamaica.
Executive director Caroline Mahfood said the foundation would be conducting a pilot project in Barnes Gully, working with partners Mona GeoInformatics Institute and the Center for Marine Sciences. Barnes is one of 19 gullies and two rivers that empty into Kingston Harbor.
“We are going to see how we can encourage people in the communities — by the way, they are not always the ones guilty of dumping things in the gullies, it’s uptown — but we are going to try and work to sensitize and encourage persons not to do that,” Mahfood said in a statement.
The foundation will work with Mona Webber, a professor of marine biology and director of the Center for Marine Sciences in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of the West Indies. Webber has worked to restore mangroves in the harbor. Mangrove wardens will be created to ensure the well-being of the plants that help protect the area from hurricanes.
Mona GeoInformatics Institute will measure waste in Kingston Harbor, the types of waste that enter it and recommend on how to reduce the waste. The project is expected to take three years.
