Accra, July 2, GNA - President John Evans Atta Mills has underscored the need to strengthen efforts at addressing ecological problems that encourage sustainable development and efficient management of marine and coastal ecosystems in the sub-region.

President Mills made the call in a speech read on his behalf by Mr P.V. Obeng, Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, at a two-day Second Ministerial Meeting in Accra on Friday. The meeting is being attended by 16 countries in the Global Environment Facility-funded Guinea Current Large Marine Ecosystem project (GCLME project).

The project aims at assisting member states acting collectively to protect the Guinea Current Region's estimated 280 million people from environmental degradation, food insecurity, depletion of fishery stocks and land-based pollution. It also seeks to help states to restore their coastal and marine habitats.

President Mills said a holistic approach to the issue of sound marine ecosystems management would ensure quality of life in our coastal communities and reduce poverty. President Mills noted that the adoption of a holistic approach for natural resources management of the ecosystem in the sub-region had gained international acceptance. "The success of this approach depends on the establishment of a good knowledge base, elaborating tenable basis for action, building a solid consultative forum and a management framework for the joint governance of shared natural resources, enhancing regional capacity and provision of the means of implementation," he said. President Mills noted that the significance and relevance of the GCLME project to many of the sub-regional and regional initiatives was immense, stressing that it was in line with the objectives of the New Partnership for Africa's Development initiative, particularly under the strategies for managing marine and coastal resources. "The achievements of the GCLME project represent the most significant effort in the implementation of the provisions of the Abidjan Convention on Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the West and Central African Region," he added. Ms. Sherry Ayittey, Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, said an estimated 60 per cent of the global population within 100 kilometres of the coastline, depended heavily on marine habitats and resources for their livelihood, adding that coastal areas were of socio-economic importance.

She gave the assurance that government would give the GCLME project the political, financial and logistical support it deserved. Ministers of Environment approved the GCLME project in 2003, which has been the continuation of a pilot science-based project launched eight years earlier, on water pollution control and biodiversity conservation in the Gulf of Guinea. The GCLME stretches from Guinea-Bissau to Angola and is under an unrelenting barrage of pollution and resource over-exploitation. The GCLME project is the response of the 16 Guinea Current countries - Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Congo DR, Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe and Togo. The Accra meeting served as the platform to review the progress in implementing the GCLME project since its inception in August 2004, and take decisions on policy and strategy. Foremost among them is the consideration and steps towards the approval of the Interim Guinea Current Commission to become a permanent body - the Guinea Current Commission - in the framework of the Abidjan Convention and Johannesburg Plan of Implementation for the long-term sustainability of the project objectives.

At a ministerial conference in Abuja, Nigeria in 2006, members advocated for the transition of the GCLME project into a full and permanent Guinea Current Commission with the installation of an interim commission. By establishing the Guinea Current Commission as a technical body, the Ministers of the GCLME countries would institutionalize regional cooperation and create the governance structure for the management of a trans-boundary ecosystem shared by 16 riparian countries. They would make a strong commitment towards the application of the principles of ecosystem-based management for the GCLME and signal to the world that African countries are prepared and committed to cooperate in overcoming trans-boundary environmental problems. 2 July 10