MISSION 'Protecting our Caribbean Sea and Sustaining our Future' Promoting regional co-operation for the protection and sustainable development of the marine environment of the Wider Caribbean Region. DESCRIPTION The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) in 1981 as one of its administered Regional Seas Programmes. This was in recognition of the importance and value of the Wider Caribbean Region’s fragile and vulnerable coastal and marine ecosystems including endemic plants and animals. The CEP brings together the 38 Member States and Territories of the Wider Caribbean Region by promoting regional co-operation for the protection and sustainable development of their coastal and marine environmental resources. The CEP also formed the basis for the development and adoption of the Cartagena Convention as the first and only regionally binding treaty of its kind in 1986. This legal agreement is supported by three technical Protocols on Oil Spills, Marine Biodiversity (Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife – SPAW) and Pollution (Land Based Sources of Marine Pollution – LBS). The three working Sub-Programmes of the CEP focus on Pollution, Marine Marine Biodiversity and Communications. E-mail contact: unep-cartagenaconvention@un.org