Pacific Island Countries (PICs)

International Maritime Organization (IMO)

The project started in 1997 and continues to operate with financing from IMO’s Technical Cooperation Fund and with the support from the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the Secretariat for the Pacific Community (SPC), with SPREP as the focal point in the region for theimplementation of the project.

The project supports the development and modernization of national legislation in Pacific Island Countries to ensure implementation and enforcement of international standards on marine environment protection. The project activities concentrate on the development of a regional model marine pollution legislation and assisting individual PICs to adapt this model legislation to their legislative systems. In addition, a harmonized regulatory regime across the Pacific Islands regionwill be introduced.

• Coastal and marine resources (Chapter IV of the Barbados Programme of Action)
• National institutions and administrative capacity (Chapter X of the BPoA)

• The Regional Model Marine Pollution Legislation–a template for Pacific Island Countries–has been developed and distributed to all PICs.
• Missions have been undertaken in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to assist them in using the model to draft bills for presentation to Parliament.

• This legislation covers many other marine pollution prevention issues, which need to be addressed, including national contingency plans and pollution equipment inventories.
• There is a need to provide further assistance to the PICs in order to enforce national legislations.

Mr. Jianxin Zhu
Head, Asia and Pacific Section
Technical Co-operation Division
International Maritime Organization
4 Albert Embankment
London SE1 7SR
United Kingdom
Tel.: (44) 20-75873175
Fax: (44) 20-75873210
E-mail: jzhu@imo.org
Web site: www.imo.org