It's getting bigger and well organized! The Gambia joined the rest of World to celebrate International Coastal Clean-up. The event attracted a lot of volunteers on the beach particularly around the tourism development area and fish landing sites to collect marine debris and other waste materials. 

National Environment Agency(NEA) has been very instrumental in organizing this event, over the past years with their collaborating stakeholder institutions. The event is growing bigger, and this year was a huge success, thanks to the efforts of the Coastal & Marine Unit with their partners such Gambia Ocean Heroes, Green-up Gambia, GREAT Institute, EU, Karpower, LG electronics, and Civil Society Organizations and Govt institutions that participated. The participation of the Minister of Environment and the First Lady of the Republic of The Gambia and the Governor of West Coast Region was really appreciated. The Gambia depends alot on tourism and fisheries as our major contributor to our GDP apart from agriculture. Therefore, clean beach will certainly promote tourism, biodiversity conservation and human health. Keeping our coastal environment free from trash is incumbent on all citizens of The Gambia. I hope Gambia Tourism GT Board and National Environment Agency will work together to control waste from beach users, especially on weekends, when alot of people go on picnics around Senegambia and Palma Rima. Despite the ban of plastic, a lot of people still utilizing single use plastic cups and straws. In a similar development, Gunjur Environmental Concern Group also embarked on tree planting exercise at Bolongfenyo Community Wildlife Reserve (The first community wildlife reserve in Gambia). The event attracted Civil Society Organizations, such as The Gambia National Forestry Platform, Wildlife Conservation Trust, Eco-travel Gambia, GEPADG, Community representative from Gunjur and other representative from Niafarang (Cassamance). The Minister of Environment, Governor, and The First Lady made it to the tree planting as well. The existing collaboration between the Civil Society Organizations in the protection of our environment is highly commendable. (Photo Credit: Green-up, and Ahmed Manjang)