The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme in Samoa has renewed its partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme.
A statement said the partnership between the regional organisation and the United Nations agency was cemented with the signing of a renewal of a memorandum of understanding on the sidelines of the 15th COP [Conference of the Parties] to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, Canada.
SPREP Director General Sefanaia Nawadra said “We are extremely grateful on behalf of our Pacific members to be able to continue this most important partnership with UNEP."
“Next year SPREP will celebrate our 30th anniversary but our history really started ten years before that as a programme of UNEP, as a coral reef monitoring programme.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Anderson, “We know that the Pacific islands are obviously amongst the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and you have the moral clarity to speak on this issue, beyond what anyone else has and that moral clarity is what we want to support because the work that you do is so critical.”
The new agreement builds on past collaboration forged through MOUs signed in 2005, 2012, and 2017 according to a media statement released by the SPREP on Saturday.
The MOU allows the organisations to work to achieve shared goals and objectives with regard to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss and pollution and waste, including biological diversity in support of environmental protection, climate change adaptation and mitigation and the sustainable development of Pacific communities.