The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Le Mamea Ropati Mualia, attended the Global Ocean Action Summit for Food Security and Blue Growth recently held in The Hague, Netherlands.
With a focus on the ‘Health of Oceans’, the meeting brought together a diverse range of stakeholders to identify solutions and success stories that reconcile competing interests and show how governance, partnership and financing can help scale up activities that result in shared prosperity around the world.
About 600 participants varying from Heads of Governments, Ministers and Secretaries, CEOs of national regional and international organisations, NGOs and members of civil societies attended the Summit.
The Summit identified key global challenges that are currently affecting our oceans today.
There was general willingness to move ahead from recognising the challenges to formulating concrete actions and developing and/or joining partnerships to help implement strategies to address the various array of issues/challenges identified thus far.
Partnerships that stress the importance of combined efforts to improve on the health and productivity of oceans bearing in mind the importance of sustainable growth and shared prosperity.
<!-- Right 300X250 -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
style="display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-2469982834957525"
data-ad-slot="8433753430"></ins>
<script>
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script> {/googleAds}
The Summit was divided in to various panel and working groups that consisted of representatives from participating nations and organizations.
These groups were tasked with formulating strategies and initiatives to assist Governments go forward in relation to the health and sustainability of our oceans.
Examples of such initiatives were integrated approaches, governance, public – private partnerships, investments and research and development innovations.
The importance of working towards the next frontier of successful integrated approaches that may attract public – private partners and assist with securing financing that becomes a catalyst for good ocean governance was also identified and discussed.
In the area of fisheries, the importance of local community participation in implementing sustainable growth for fisheries stocks and enhancing of food security initiatives was emphasized.
Focus was also placed on the importance of reducing and removing of Illegal Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing activities.
Key partnerships between Governments, NGOS, Banks and Civil Societies were also identified as a key component in sustaining fisheries.
The Pacific Island region was well represented at the Summit. Solutions to the many challenges faced by Pacific States were identified and a call for more recognition of the efforts of the regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) and its ongoing efforts was put through.
The strengthening of the partnership with the development partners in the developed world was also encouraged by all Ministers’ in attendance.
Le Mamea was accompanied by the A.C.E.O of Fisheries.
<!-- ads-articles(24.03.14) -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
style="display:inline-block;width:336px;height:280px"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-9419815128221199"
data-ad-slot="2395638412"></ins>
<script>
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script>{/googleAds}