UNEP/GEF Project: NPA Arctic

EXTRACTS FROM KLAUS TOEPFER SPEECH

I am pleased to be here to address you here at the first meeting of the Project Steering Committee for the UNEP/GEF project: Support to the National Plan of Action for the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment.

The Arctic region is the mirror of the Global Change: impacts of the climate change, change in biota, concentration of global contaminants. Concerning the Persistent Toxic Substances, UNEP and AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme) are concluding the project: Persistent Toxic Substances, Indigenous Peoples and Food Security in Russian North, which presented the level of contamination and human health impacts, resulting in policy recommendations for adaptation by the local population to the contamination levels. It was also assessed in this report that there exist sources of contaminants both within the Arctic region and outside the region.

Degraded environmental situation can become a restricting factor to the development of the Russian Arctic region, where indigenous peoples reside. Without healthy environment, sustainable development, safeguarding the health of the residents, cannot be achieved. Efforts to address local sources should be an important step, and can be combined with the international efforts to address the contaminant sources from outside the region since they are persistent and transported over a long range.

During the period when the current project was prepared with the GEF Project Development Facility funds, the environmental situation has been analysed, resulting in identification of 147 environmental hot spots, with 21 priority hot spots.

The project was approved for GEF funding at the GEF Council in December 2001. After the project appraisal, UNEP and the then two co-Executing Agencies: Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and Advisory Committee on Protection of the Seas (ACOPS), came to the initial agreement on the project document, which is a document outlining operational details for the implementation of the project.

Unfortunately, after this agreement, there were divergent views among the project partners on the project implementation modalities. Through three consultative meetings (December 2003, Moscow: July 2004, Geneva; and May 2005, Washington, D.C.), the project implementation modalities have been further developed and agreed upon as the revised project document, which was endorsed by the GEF CEO and signed in July 2005.

The project is a demonstration of an approach and methodologies for addressing land-based activities that affect the marine environment, applicable specifically to the Arctic marine environment. UNEP hosts the coordination officer the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities in the Hague. Through the GEF funding window of GPA demonstration, this is one of the initial set of the GEF-funded GPA demonstration projects, and the project should present an approach and method to set up a national framework for action to address the identified issues relevant to the marine and coastal environment, inter alia, of transboundary significance.

The project preparation processes are communicated to the GPA, and implementation progress will be reported to the planned GPA Intergovernmental Review in Beijing in October next year.

UNEP is making contribution to the work of the Arctic Council. The project has been built on the work of the Council, particularly the assessment related work by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP). The progress in the preparation of the project was reported to the Arctic Council meeting and further progress in the implementation will be reported to the Council. Through the implementation of this project, UNEP will seek a further interaction and collaboration with the Arctic Council processes.

Finally, as has been the case in the past years, UNEP has been placing a clear priority to this important project, and I am personally committed to smooth implementation of the project. The key to the success is to build confidence among the involved partners and establish a collaborative framework. I wish UNEP’s capability in catalysing actions among the partners can bring the Executing Agency and other implementation partners together to bring about impacts on the Arctic Environment, shared by multiple countries.