When it comes to waste management, the Pacific knows where we want to be, and we have a new five plan to help us get there – together.
Striving for a Cleaner Pacific 2025 guided by the Pacific Regional Waste and Pollution Management Strategy 2016 – 2025. There is now a new Cleaner Pacific Implementation Plan 2021 – 2025 to navigate us through the range of actions to be done.
Learning from lessons of the Cleaner Pacific 2016 – 2019 Implementation Plan this next phase has a smaller number of activities that address priority gaps identified in a mid-term review that was undertaken.
It found the 2016 – 2019 Plan was ambitious with 124 activities to be completed, while good progress was achieved for 29 activities, only six of 20 performance indicators exceeded, or met, their 2020 targets.
“Like nearly everything we know that was planned, the emergence of COVID-19 was something that we had not anticipated. As such this really knocked us back when it came to achieving key milestones we had planned,” said Mr Anthony Talouli, the Acting Director of Waste Management and Pollution Control at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
“Considering this major challenge, we still managed to accomplish excellent outcomes, and adapt quickly to ensure we were still serving our Pacific islands region in the strive for a Cleaner Pacific. This new plan helps us propel this progress forward.”
Major outcomes are to be commended during the first phase of our journey towards a Cleaner Pacific 2025. Working towards Strategic Goal 3: Improve life-cycle management of residuals, when it came to the quantity of used oil stockpiles in meters cubed, the baseline in 2014 was at 2,961 m3. While the 2020 target was 1,480 m3 there was an amount of 4,886 m3 that was collected.
Yet there were also lessons learnt which have identified priority issues for the Pacific islands to focus upon ensuring all activities are aligned with the Cleaner Pacific’s 2025 performance indicator and strategic goals for the 2021 – 2025 plan.
The vision being a Cleaner Pacific Environment, with the mission being to implement practical and sustainable solutions for the prevention and management of waste and pollution in the Pacific. There are 31 activities to be undertaken in line with performance indicators to keep this work on track and address the four strategic goals. These four goals span prevention and minimising generation of wastes and pollution and their associated impacts, recovery of resources from waste and pollutants, improving the life-cycle management of residues, and to improve the monitoring and reporting of actions.
“We’re pretty excited to roll this out – we see this waste challenge growing in new areas such as that from COVID-19 – we know we have a mammoth task ahead of us to achieve a Cleaner Pacific 2025, but we believe that by working together, across our Pacific islands region, we’ll be able to get there,” said Mr Talouli.
“It will take everyone to understand that they play a role, and then making sure they play it well for our Pacific islands people. We look forward to working with everyone to get this second phase going.”
The Cleaner Pacific 2025 Implementation Plan 2021 – 2025 was presented during the Island Forum with 26 SPREP Members session held on Day One of the Third Clean Pacific Roundtable.
For more information, please visit: www.cleanpacificrountable.com
The Third Clean Pacific Roundtable is a partnership event supported by New Caledonia, Acotred Pacific, Agence Francaise de Development (AFD), Australian Aid (AUS Aid), European Union (EU), Fonds Pacifique, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), UN Environment Program (UNEP), Province SUD and Province NORD.