Challenge
Learn more about the Nutrient Challenge
This is a collection of project initiatives the GPNM, its partners and the wider global community has been engaged with and/or under active implementation. This is not intended to be an exhaustive showcase of projects from across the globe but rather an attempt to highlight those initiatives of significant scale of influence and impact in addressing the nutrient challenge. More detailed information will be provided on GPNM projects on this site; readers may however referred to project website for external projects.
The UNEP 2014 Year Book highlighed the importance of excess reactive nitrogen in the environment, its conclusions are alarming. This is not just because of the magnitude and complexity of nitrogen pollution, but also because so little progress has been made in reducing it. Few of the solutions identified have been scaled up, while the world continues to pump out nitrogen pollution that contributes significantly to declines in air quality, deterioration of terrestrail and aquatic environments, exacerbation of climate change, and depletion of the ozone layer.
Since 2011, Caribbean coastlines have been subject to unprecedented, massive, episodic influxes of floating sargassum seaweed. While 2020 was relatively mild in terms of sargassum volumes, and a global pandemic became the overarching worry, 2018 was record breaking in terms of sargassum volumes reaching Caribbean shores and 2019 was also significant.
Coastal areas are areas of high productivity where inputs from land, sea, air and people converge. With over 40 per cent of the human population residing in coastal areas, ecosystem degradation in these areas can have disproportionate effects on society (IGOS, 2006). One of the largest pressures on coastal environments is eutrophication, resulting primarily from land-based nutrient input from agricultural runoff and domestic wastewater discharge. Coastal eutrophication can lead to serious damage to marine ecosystems, vital sea habitats, and can cause the spread of harmful algal blooms.
