4. The Global Programme of Action for the Protection
of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities,
Implementation in West and Central Africa
by Ms. Nassere Kaba
BACKGROUND
The Global Programme of Action (GPA) for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities was adopted by the Intergovernmental Conference held in Washington D.C., United States of America, from 23 October to 3 November 1995. The aim of this programme is to prevent the degradation of the marine environment arising from land-based activities, by helping States to undertake measures (individually or collectively and taking into account their policies, priorities and respective resources), aimed at preventing, reducing, controlling and/or eliminating the degradation of the marine environment or to remedy the effects of land-based activities. The implementation of GPA could maintain and, if necessary, re-establish, the productivity of the marine environment and its biological diversity, thus protecting public health and promoting conservation and sustainable development of the biological resources of the sea.
The Washington Conference designated the United Nations Environment Programme to act as the secretariat for GPA and recommended it as coordinator and catalyst of activities within the United Nations system, for other international and national cooperation organizations. UNEP therefore should, through its programmes and its role as secretariat:
(a) Promote and facilitate implementation of the programme of action at a national level;
(b) Promote and facilitate implementation at a regional and subregional level, particularly by relaunching the regional seas programmes; and
(c) Assume the catalytic role in the implementation of the programme at an international level with the support of other organizations and institutions.
GPA prepares the measures to be undertaken on a national scale, regional and international cooperation and possible approaches by category of sources of persistent organic pollutants (POP).
PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS
The Global Programme of Action defined POPs as organic compounds that: (i) possess toxic characteristics; (ii) are persistent; (iii) are liable to bioaccumulate; (iv) are prone to long-range transport and deposition far from their source; and (v) can result in adverse environmental and human health effects at locations near and far from their source. They have low water solubility and high fat solubility.
The following twelve compounds were selected by the decision 18/32 of the Governing Council of UNEP for immediate attention: aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, dioxins and furans, endrine, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, PCBs and toxaphene. Except for dioxins and furans, which are unintended by-products, the other substances are used in industry, agriculture and in disease vector control.
GPA, in chapter V on possible approaches by category of sources, enumerates the objectives for the control of POPs:
(a) To reduce and/or eliminate emissions and discharges of POPs that threaten to accumulate to dangerous levels in the marine and coastal environment;
(b) To give immediate attention to finding and introducing preferable substitutes for chemicals that pose unreasonable and otherwise unmanageable risks to human health and the environment;
(c) To use cleaner production processes, including best available techniques, to reduce and/or eliminate hazardous by-products associated with production, incineration and combustion;
(d) To promote best environmental practice for pest control in agriculture and aquaculture.
The programme also provides for activities to be undertaken at a national, regional and international level to achieve the above-mentioned objectives.
National Actions
According to GPA, actions, policies and measures of States within their national capacities should include:
(a) Development, compilation and maintenance of inventories of point-source releases of POPs, identification and assessment of diffuse sources and sinks from which POPs may remobilize, and assessment of inputs from these sources as a basis for pollution control and prevention measures; also for the sound environmental management of wastes containing persistent organic pollutants;
(b) Development of comprehensive national programmes of action for the reduction and/or elimination of emissions and discharges, and where applicable, remobilization from all significant sources of POPs, including targets and timetables and sector-specific measures for industry and agriculture:
(i) Adoption of appropriate policy instruments - which could include regulation, economic instruments and voluntary agreements - on POPs applying the precautionary principle and the "polluter pays" principle. Priority should be given to phasing out or banning of chemicals that pose unreasonable and otherwise unmanageable risks to human health and the environment and whose use can not be adequately controlled. This can be achieved through substitution by environmentally sound substances, use of best available techniques (BAT), application of best environmental practice (BEP) and policies of integrated pollution prevention and control;
(ii) Development of appropriate regulatory measures and establishment of facilities for environmentally sound collection and disposal of wastes containing POPs;
(iii) Establishment of an environmental monitoring programme for POPs including the development of assessment criteria and the adoption of internationally accepted quality control and quality assurance procedures;
(iv) Development of programmes to promote the informed use of substances which can result in discharges and emissions of POPs from diffuse sources, including the promotion of good agricultural practice to limit the use of pesticides to the application rates essential for crop protection, and restraint in the non-agricultural use of pesticides, especially on roads and railways;
(v) Establishment of information services for industry and agriculture on least environmentally hazardous handling and use of POPs, and on substitutes, technology and ways and means to prevent, reduce and eliminate pollution by POPs, including best environmental practice, best available techniques and integrated pollution prevention and control;
(vi) Ratification and implementation of relevant international and regional conventions and agreements;
(vii)Ensuring the effective implementation of relevant bilateral, regional and international decisions and recommendations, inter alia, by:
(a) Assessing regularly whether the national goals and measures to reduce and eliminate pollution by POPs are being accomplished;
(b) Compliance monitoring, assessing and reporting the effects of these measures; and
(c) Establishing or strengthening, as appropriate, institutions to deal effectively with the problems of POPs.
Regional Actions
Regional actions should include:
(a) Encouraging existing regional agreements and programmes of action on the prevention and elimination of pollution of the marine and coastal environment from land-based activities, to set up and implement programmes and priority measures to prevent, reduce and/or eliminate emissions and discharges of POPs and materials containing POPs from all sources. To this end, they should, inter alia:
(i) Adopt targets and timetables for reduction and/or elimination of POPs releases through their substitution, and on best available techniques (BAT), best environmental practice (BEP) and integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC);
(ii) Adopt decisions and recommendations on the development of harmonized assessment criteria and monitoring programmes based on regionally or internationally agreed quality control and quality assurance procedures;
(iii)Provide member States with technical information and advice regarding handling, use and disposal of POPs and their substitutes and ways and means to minimize and eliminate their release to the environment;
(iv) Ensure transparency of the implementation of decisions and recommendations by adopting regular reporting on implementation and monitoring of measures regarding POPs; and
(v) Assess compliance with, and the effects of, the agreed measures;
(b) Encouraging States that are not already parties to regional agreements and action plans on the prevention and elimination of pollution of the marine and coastal environment from land-based activities to join such cooperation and to cooperate on a bilateral and/or a multilateral basis in the regulation of POPs;
(c) Encouraging the strengthening of or, as appropriate, establishing regional institutions to deal effectively with the problems of POPs.
International Actions
International actions should include:
(a) Urging international, regional and subregional funding sources and mechanisms and donor countries, to ensure that the objectives, principles and measures laid down in this chapter be taken into account when supporting projects that directly or indirectly relate to emissions, discharges and, where appropriate, the manufacture and use of POPs, as well as the clean-up and restoration of areas polluted with POPs;
(b) Encouraging international, regional and subregional funding sources and mechanisms to ensure that available financial resources are made available for supporting measures to reduce or eliminate releases of POPs to the environment;
(c) Inviting appropriate international agencies and bodies to strengthen necessary information exchange, transfer of environmentally sound technology and capacity-building for the implementation of the objectives, principles and measures laid down in this chapter for the reduction and/or elimination of POPs releases to the environment;
(d) Strengthening and extending existing international quality assurance, standardization and classification mechanisms for POPs to ensure that inventories and assessments are both reliable and intercomparable. Such existing mechanisms include those co-sponsored by IOC, UNEP and IAEA under the GIPME programme, and the associated activities of the Marine Environmental Studies Laboratory in Monaco;
(e) Cooperation with countries in need of assistance, through financial, technical and scientific support, in order to reduce and/or eliminate emissions and discharges of POPs that threaten to accumulate to dangerous levels in the marine and coastal environment;
(f) Priority attention should be given to finding and introducing preferable substitutes for POPs that pose unreasonable and otherwise unmanageable risks to human health and the environment.
IMPLEMENTATION OF GPA IN THE WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICAN REGION: ABIDJAN WORKSHOP
In order to facilitate the establishment of GPA, UNEP as the GPA secretariat, in cooperation with the relevant regional organizations, has held a series of technical workshops of government experts, and/or representatives of international organizations, funding agencies, where possible, of the private sector and experts from non-governmental organizations; this was to strengthen capacity-building for the protection of the aquatic environment (including the coastal, marine and mainland environment) against pollution from land-based sources, and to promote regional and subregional cooperation.
The workshop for the implementation of GPA in the West and Central African was held in Abidjan from 25 to 28 November 1997. The workshop achieved the following:
(a) It discussed both the regional review carried out on the countries of the WACAF region and the regional action plan;
(b) It identified the elements needed to prepare the strategies in the region with a special reference to the approaches recommended by category of sources (chapter V of GPA);
(c) It considered the requirements for the development and implementation of the programme of action at a national level, including the assistance mechanisms required and available through the organizations supporting GPA;
(d) It defined and agreed on the broad terms for the preparation of regional programmes of action and strategies aimed at controlling the source of pollution from land-based sources.
Each of the delegates of the countries represented (15 in total: Angola, Benin, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Togo) identified and classified in priority order the sources of pollution affecting the marine environment. Table 1 presents a summary by country of the priority problems identified.
All of the countries present, divided into 2 working groups, specified the constraints (economic, technical, political, management and resource development) that they encountered in the protection of their marine environment from land-based activities. These constraints are shown in table 2.
In relation to the regional programme of action, the working groups that were established emphasized for each main source of pollution identified in the region the objectives, strategies, specific actions, involved institutions, the timetable for implementation of actions and the organizations or elements of support for the programme. A summary of all these proposals is shown in table 3.
As far as POPs were concerned, which were identified as one of the sources of pollution in the region, the regional programme of action proposed:
1. Objectives
- To assess the impact of POPs on the environment and public health
- To minimize risks of exposure of people to POPs
- To control manufacture, importation and also distribution.
2. Strategies
- To list the type of substances used
- To improve the monitoring resources
- To monitor the use by appropriate methods
3. Specific actions to be undertaken
- Make appropriate surveys of users
- To undertake measurements and analyses in referred laboratories
- To undertake information campaigns
- The implementation of conventions and international agreements
- To undertake strict controls by using appropriate structures.
GEF PROJECT PROPOSAL
UNEP and FAO, in consultation with the focal points of some countries, proposed a project to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) entitled "Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (ADT) for the protection of a Large Marine Ecosystem of the Canaries Current from Land-based Activities". This project involves 7 countries of the West African Region: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco. It was submitted on 17 March 1997.
It will be undertaken as part of the implementation of the Action Plan and of the Abidjan Convention on "the protection and development of the marine environment and coastal areas of the West and Central African Region". It will also assist the countries involved to respond to their obligations under GPA.
1. Objectives
In order to reduce the pollution of the marine environment from land-based activities and damage to critical habitats, through the investments of a portfolio of priority investments, the project proposes to:
- Report on the degree of degradation of the large marine ecosystem of the Canaries Current;
- To identify viable intervention measures to reduce degradation;
- To obtain the participation of governments and donors in a portfolio of priority investments.
2. Expected results
With the aim of having the necessary information on pollution and the degradation of coastal habitats, of humid zones and the coastal waters caused by agricultural, domestic and industrial activities, on questions in respect of transboundary analyses and to elaborate a portfolio of investments based on the identified priority problems, the project will produce:
- National reports on the assessment of sources of soil pollution, affecting international waters and the biological resources of the region;
- A regional report on the assessment of sources of soil pollution, enumerating the "hot spots", critical habitats and the major sensitive ecosystems in the area dominated by the large marine ecosystem of the Canaries Current;