Vanuatu stakeholders have convened to discuss the draft document on the country’s marine spatial plan before it can be presented in Parliament for approval next year. Stakeholders from different government departments and non-government organizations met to revisit the 137 page draft document.
Fiji is committed to, and is embarking upon, a process to significantly increase the number and coverage of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) within the country. To help deliver on this commitment, the Marine Working Group of the Fiji national Protected Area Committee (PAC), established under the Environmental Management Act 2005, requested a review of previous efforts to describe marine priority sites for Fiji.
In 2015, the Tongan Cabinet embarked upon a National Marine Spatial Planning process, establishing a marine spatial planning technical working group comprising seven Ministries (the “Ocean 7”). One of their tasks was to identify Tonga’s special, unique marine areas. This report brings together data, literature and the outputs of a special workshop synthesising information about the areas identified. Data collected informed a scoring system by which the areas could be rated.
A national-level community consultation process has started in Samoa to create marine spatial planning (M.S.P.) for Samoa under the recently launched Samoa Ocean Strategy...The four-year project is funded by the European Union Global Climate Change Alliance Plus Initiative...The M.S.P.
The Tongan government has approved the Tonga Ocean Management Plan, a milestone in the work to ensure sustainable management of the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
Global Fishing Watch has launched an innovative technology portal to help strengthen management of marine protected areas (MPAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs).
Tongan officials expect to take the country’s Ocean Plan to cabinet this year after the initial plan was postponed. Having had nation-wide consultations in 2018 and 2019, the Tonga Ocean 7 team had hoped to finalise the plan in 2020.
The Niue Ocean Wide (NOW) project, a public-private partnership between the Niue Government and NGO Tofia Niue has completed its initial five-year project which started in 2015...Tofia Niue’s president Coral Pasisi thanked everyone who has contributed to the Niue Ocean Wide project over the past
Thirty national experts in the Solomon Islands gathered for a two- day workshop to review the first-ever zero-draft marine spatial plan for the Solomon Islands.
The Guide contains information about essential components and sub-components of marine spatial planning legislation, describing each and highlighting its role and significance. The Guide also provides examples of textual provisions from existing marine spatial planning laws and regulations, along with sample provisions prepared by the authors, to illustrate how legislative or regulatory language can address each component. Appendix A contains a list of marine spatial planning laws to which the legal drafter can refer.