From sea to regional sea: meeting the threats

In 1973 the Governing Council of the newly-created United Nations Environment Programme decided to tackle the problems threatening the ocean environment. But what was the best approach, global or regional? They decided to use both.

Customizing the programme

While some threats to the health of oceans and coastal areas could be tackled most effectively at a global level, their particular nature and relative importance tended to vary from region to region, from sea to sea.

So, through its Regional Seas Programme, UNEP encouraged groups of countries sharing common seas to find regional solutions to their particular problems. They might find inspiration and guidance from programmes in other areas, and advice and support from international organizations, but they would decide the nature and contents of their own environmental “action plans".

UNEP would be like a 'gardener' for the regional programmes: it would collect the seeds, then plant and nourish them through their early and most vulnerable years. Once the programmes gained strength and maturity, they would be able to flourish on their own.

The goal: independent programmes

In this way, what began as a global programme implemented through regional components gradually evolved into a decentralized collection of more-or-less independent regional programmes.

The Regional Seas approach was based on periodically revised action plans adopted by high-level intergovernmental meetings and implemented, in most cases, within the framework of legally binding regional Conventions, under the authority of the respective contracting parties or intergovernmental meetings. In its first 20 years the programme grew to encompass fourteen coastal regions and three partner programmes, gradually becoming so decentralized that the centre began to wither even as the branches flourished.

New strategic action approach

Following the adoption of the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities at the Washington Conference in November 1995, UNEP initiated actions to revitalize the Regional Seas programme. In February 1999 the UNEP Governing Council again stressed the need for UNEP to strengthen the Regional Seas programme as its central mechanism for implementation of its activities relevant to chapter 17 of Agenda 21. In June 1998 all the secretariats and coordinating units of the regional programmes met for the first time at The Hague. A second Global Meeting of Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans was held at The Hague from 5 to 8 July 1999, a third in Monaco in November 2000.

Today UNEP is developing a new strategic action programme to facilitate collaboration among the many Regional Seas Conventions and Actions Plans and their global counterparts. At its most recent meeting, the UNEP Governing Council encouraged UNEP's expansion of the Regional Seas programme into new parts of the world, and called for increased regional and interregional cooperation to protect the marine and coastal environment.

For more, see 'A World of Neighbours: UNEP's Regional Seas Programme' by Ellik Adler (Tropical Coasts, July 2003) (844K)