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Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia

UNDP East Asian Seas ICM (PEMSEA)

By IW:LEARN

June 22^nd, 2018

Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA), celebrates its 25th Anniversary this year. It started as a Global Environment Facility-funded project, but has since evolved into a regional intergovernmental mechanism, including all the countries of Southeast Asia, together with China, Japan and both North and South Korea, and encompassing some seven million square kilometres of shared sea, bordered by some 235,000 km of coastline. Eleven of them have signed up to a shared strategy – the Sustainable Development Strategy for the Seas of East Asia.

PEMSEA's mission is “to foster and sustain health and resilience in oceans, coasts and economies throughout the seas of East Asia,” says Ryan Whisnant, Director of Strategic Initiatives. “It works very closely with the governments of the region, but the work really happens on the ground at local sites, in what is a set of integrated coastal management (ICM) sites across the region.”

“ICM,” he explains, “recognises the fact that you cannot look at any one sector, focusing; for example, just on pollution, sustainable fisheries or sustainable tourism - but that there are relationships and interlinkages among all of them. Similarly, he goes on, it involves all stakeholders “including local governments, businesses, community organisations and NGOs – working together to build the capacity to manage healthy coastal areas.”

“So far,” he adds, “PEMSEA has been some part of securing that more than 17% of the entire region's coastline managed under some form of ICM, making it highly likely that the contracting countries will reach the agreed target of 25% of the coast of the East Asian Region being under ICM by 2021.”

Nancy Bermas, PEMSEA's Senior Country Program Manager, tells, for example, how it works with universities, the private sector and national and local government in the Philippines, in implementing the sustainable development of the province of Bataan, on Manila Bay as a long-term local ICM framework. Victor Ubaldo, the province's ICM Program Director, describes how its government has co-operated with official national agencies, businesses and peoples organisations to replant mangroves.

Ronnie Baldera and Benito Villaneuva, mangrove caretakers, testify that this has reduced the impact of waves on the shore. Jun Hernandez, a fishers' community organiser, adds that restoring mangroves, together with building artificial reefs and implementing the ICM programme as a whole, has increased fish populations.

“Much of it began,” says Jose Enrique Garcia, a Congressman and former mayor of Balanga, the province's capital, “with a 'coastal clean-up day', which jumpstarted our determination to come up with a feasible, practical, sustainable coastal programme for the city. This resulted, for example, in an area that was going to be developed as a beach resort, instead being preserved as a wetland park rich in mangroves and birds.” He continues, “People now recognise Balanga as a place where sustainable industry, such as our dried fish processing, now thrives. If you look at the commercial side, we have grown by more than 100% over the past few years, but that is complemented by the growth also of our environmental protection activities.”

“The diversity of the GEF investment portfolio in the marine and ocean space, is a testament to fact that transforming current ocean management practices will only be impactful if we pull on our collective strengths and vision to succeed," says Christian Severin, GEF International Waters Focal Area Coordinator. “This unique mix of ingenuity from local entrepreneurs, coupled with national and regional policies and ministerial endorsed action-oriented frameworks, lays the foundation for the long-term processes needed for triggering sustainable management of the shared ocean and marine resources and ecosystem services.”

This story provides an illustration of how GEF IW projects are already addressing themes in the new GEF IW strategy for the 7th GEF Replenishment. In this case the story highlights how projects can address Objective 1. Strengthening Blue Economy opportunities. In GEF-7, investments will be strengthening nations Blue Economy opportunities, through three areas of strategic action: 1) sustaining healthy coastal and marine ecosystems; 2) catalyzing sustainable fisheries management; and, 3) addressing pollution reduction in marine environments.