Distinguished representatives, Development Partners, Waste and Pollution Management Colleagues and experts from the region

Members of the private sector, civil society, academia and tertiary institutions.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As the Secretariat and Convener of the Clean Pacific Roundtable I welcome all you dignitaries and colleagues to the 4th Clean Pacific Roundtable meeting. It is a special pleasure for two reasons, it’s our first face-to-face meeting since COVID as our last meeting was a virtual meeting 3 years ago in 2021. Second that is that we meet here in Tuvalu as an atoll state, where the challenges we face as a roundtable manifest most clearly.

Let me speak on all our behalf to thank the Prime Minister and his government for agreeing to host our roundtable, in particular so soon after forming government. It is a show of the concern, priority and commitment Tuvalu has to address the issue of waste. We already experienced with the meetings last week and in this wonderful opening your hospitality and the togetherness of your communities in hosting and looking after us all as honoured guests. Fakafetai Lasi.

Within the 3-year period since we last met as a roundtable, with population growth and its concentration in urban centres, we have continued increase of waste and pollution pressures from human induced activities. Including increased volumes of household waste (here in Tuvalu we heard on Friday that 80% of what you use every day comes from overseas mainly as packaged goods), plastic pollution, marine debris, oil and chemical pollution, industrial and agricultural run-off. For all of us who had the chance to walk or drive around the island over the weekend the waste management and pollution issues and challenges become quickly apparent and the highest point in Tuvalu like it is in the Marshall Islands is the landfill. While I am encouraged by the improvements in management, we all know that we have to find better solutions then what we have today. It is a daunting task, but I have been coming to Tuvalu for over 30 years and I have seen major improvements, the most pleasing being the rehabilitation of the large borrow pits that had become informal dumps, all are filled and many now have houses on them. Your work on organics and recycling is also exemplary. This proves that where there is political and community will and the partners to help, we can together address seemingly insurmountable challenges.

These waste pressures are exacerbated by what has become our regional constant and an existential threat to countries like Tuvalu – the impacts of Climate Change. We stand today on land that is a response to climate change – this wonderful facility was built for the Leaders Meeting and used to highlight what atoll countries are increasingly being called to do – reclaiming land lost to the ocean and using it to protect themselves from the ravages of sea-level rise and inundation during extreme events.  We have been changing to clean technology like solar, wind turbines and hybrid and electric vehicles but these generate their own new waste management challenges. Our ability to adapt to climate change relies on the state of our environment and the ecosystem services. If our environment and ecosystems are not conserved, protected and managed, we limit our options to adapt and rehabilitate.

Globally, the UN has declared that we are facing the triple planetary crises of biodiversity loss, climate change impacts and waste and pollution (we are literally drowning under a sea or in some cases a tsunami of waste). In our region we can certainly say we agree because we are amongst the countries and regions most affected. All three issues need to be addressed and its best we do so in a planned and integrated way. 

All three planetary crises are addressed in two main theatres of action – at global negotiations and through national actions which in our case in the pacific, because of limited national capacity and resources, are supported by regional cooperation.

Many of our issues in the Pacific are generated outside our borders and region. We need to engage effectively at global fora to ensure that those countries that cause those impacts take the actions needed to address them – at the very least to meet their convention obligations but increasingly advocate them to go beyond and set more ambitious targets and commitments. We serve as the world’s conscience being the only region who have negligible contribution to these global issues but are amongst the first and most impacted by their consequences. Unfortunately, another way you can look at it is we are the canary in the mine who experiences first its lethal impacts. This is why we need to persevere to loudly and vociferously object and advocate to ensure there is the required collective global action.

For climate negotiations we have long organised amongst ourselves effectively as PSIDS and joined forces with other SIDS through AOSIS. Over the last two years we have started to organise as PSIDS for the CBD and the Plastics INC, but we have not seen the evolution of AOSIS into these other MEAs. Here we need to look at other evolving groupings of like-minded states such as the Higher Ambition Coalitions to help us make our case and achieve our aspirations.

The INC towards a global instrument on Plastics is a process that is priority for our region. Our leaders accepted it as one of the few issues given the designation as a Regional Collective Actions under the 2050 Bule Pacific Strategy, and at last year's Leaders Meeting became one of the Pacific Partnerships for Prosperity.

I am convinced that in 20 years’ time this instrument will have a similar profile as the UNFCCC. Plastics is in every part of our lives. We need to ensure that the INC is true to its mandated instructions to address the whole life cycle of plastics, in particular the raw material, production processes and chemicals of concern to ensure we focus first on shutting the tap where necessary and regulating it where needed. We need to maintain in this instrument the special case for SIDS that we have as a foundation of other MEAs. All the downstream management measures and financing mechanisms within the draft instrument need to be applicable to our region.

As a region we have been able to effectively prepare and participate in the INC or Global Plastic Treaty negotiations through the support of Australia, New Zealand and the United Nations together with NGO and University partners. We are entering a crucial phase of the negotiations and look forward to open ended Intersessional ad hoc expert working groups convening in Bangkok Thailand in August. The fifth session of the INC in November in Busan Korea. Leading into Busan a group of like-minded states including the members of the High Ambition Coalition have adopted a declaration called Bridge to Busan that seeks to ensure production and other upstream measures remains within the draft treaty. In my view this is crucial to our effectively managing waste within the region and I commend those SPREP members that already on board and strongly urge all of us to subscribe to this declaration. There is real danger that these are removed from the draft instrument, and we are left with one that only addresses the downstream issues. I am pleased that we will have a plastic dialogue on Wednesday to discuss all aspects of addressing plastic pollution including the Global Plastic Treaty.

For national action and regional cooperation, we have the overarching legal framework of the Noumea Convention and its two Protocols. At the strategic and technical level to support implementation we have the Clean Pacific Roundtable and Framework. The framework has its subsidiary thematic action plans and communities of practice. Underpinning that at the national level are the national plans that have been put in place to address national priorities and meet convention obligations.

Our Leaders adopted in 2022 in Suva the 2050 Blue Pacific Strategy. Last year in the Cook Islands the Implementation Plan was approved. This year in Tonga the revised regional architecture will be tabled. SPREP has been delegated as co-lead with SPC in two areas - Climate Change and Disaster; and Ocean and Environment.

The process has been messy and, in my view, disjointed and over complicated. We have advocated for utilising existing mechanisms and strengthening CROP coordination particularly through the reestablishment of CROP WGs and we have led the reestablishment of the Deputies WG and the SDWG which we hope will prompt other CROP WGs to be formed.

 We have concentrated our work in strengthening our own institutional arrangements and capacity in our designated lead areas to facilitate delivery of Climate Change and Environment actions and contribute to ocean and disaster work.  We have well established and proven frameworks and roundtables to coordinate and implement action.

For climate change we have the One CROP mechanism to support climate negotiations, we have re-convened the Pacific Climate Change Roundtable to coordinate regional support for national implementation. We have hosted the Pacific Ocean Pacific Climate Change Science Conferences – the fourth was in Apia this year with NUS and 2026 will be hosted by SINU and 2028 by TNU. We have convened the PMC and Met Ministers and that will likely increase scope into hydrology, seismology, climate ocean science and early warning systems. This is our interface with disaster work of SPC and there is collaboration with the NDMOs. We have started implementation of Weather Ready Pacific and working on funding from GCF and other sources to expand this work. We are reorganising our Climate Change Programme to split in two – climate Science and Climate Change Resilience – mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage negotiations support. This year we established a new Strategic Planning, Partnerships and Resource Mobilisation Department to strengthen our climate financing support to countries and our role as accredited entity for GCF and Adaptation Fund.

For Biodiversity we have the long-established Pacific Island Roundtable for Nature Conservation and its constituent thematic working groups implementing the Framework for Nature Conservation that is fully aligned to the GBF. We are assisting countries to align their NBSAPs which is needed to access to the GBF Fund that supplements what is already available through GEF.

For Environmental Governance we are tabling at this year's Executive Board a new SPREP Sustainable Development roundtable to cover our work in this area that will cover – Planning (NEMS), Data and Information (SoE), Development Control (EIA, SEA, Safeguards), Sustainable development approaches – blue economy, green economy, nature-based solutions.

Ocean under our SPREP strategic Plan is a crosscutting issue across our four programmes. This year’s Executive Board will be considering SPREPs integrated framework for engagement on Ocean issues. Once approved this will guide our work on Oceans. We are supporting the Ocean Commissioner and his office as they lead our collective work on Oceans including the new Convention on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction.

For waste and pollution, the Cleaner Pacific Roundtable and Framework together with its constituent thematic action plans and underpinning national plans are the mechanism and vehicle for implementation of the 2050 Strategy in waste and pollution. I wanted you to have this big picture in mind as you are deliberating the strategic directions for the Clean Pacific Roundtable.

I am pleased that despite our “special case as SIDS” almost all Pacific states have or are working towards adopting policies and legislation to ban single use plastics and polystyrene. We will soon be the first region where all states will have legislation to ban single use plastic.

We have waste audits for all countries, so we have a good handle on what we need to deal with. We should consolidate this into national and regional state of waste and pollution reports to help our planners, decision makers and negotiators.

In addition, I know that many countries have, and others are working towards adopting various forms of sustainable financing mechanisms “Extended Producer Responsibility”, or what we call “Advanced Recovery Fee and Deposit” frameworks where importers and in-country manufacturers share the management and cost burden for end-of-life products. Again, we will soon be the first region where all states will have an advanced recovery fee and deposit.

This Roundtable will provide a platform by way of 7 dialogue sessions, two consultation sessions for all stakeholders to dialogue, network and address a broad range of waste management issues including plastic pollution, hazardous waste, landfill management, bulky waste, disaster response, recoverable items, E-waste, used oil, organics, end-of-life vehicles, technologies, to review the implementation of the Cleaner Pacific 2025 and to start the conversations of what the aspirations are for the next iteration of the Strategy – Cleaner Pacific 2035 with the theme of Clean Environment. Resilient Ocean. Healthy Communities.

The Clean Pacific Roundtable, whilst a fairly new regional forum is an ideal conduit for progressing innovative solutions and capitalizing on new initiatives as we navigate together towards a pollution-free Pacific. The popularity and interest in this event highlight the importance of regional waste and pollution management to the region.

The regional waste and pollution management strategy for the Pacific, or the Cleaner Pacific 2025 as it is better known, is a regional Blueprint which is critical in bringing together the joint efforts of SPREP’s key regional partners’ including (EU, AFD, JICA, UN and Australia) to assist Pacific Island communities to improve waste and pollution management practices in various waste streams. We welcome new partners such as the USAID, ADB and WB.

As we start the development of the Cleaner Pacific 2035, it is imperative that Pacific Island countries move from a linear model to one of circularity that advocates sustainable production and consumption. At this Roundtable we will be discussing what does this mean and why is it important to create a safe Pacific Circularity that promotes the whole life cycle of products: from the design of the product and production processes to better informed consumption choices, to modern waste management, and the provision of secondary raw materials that feed back into the economy.

We are mindful that indigenous and traditional knowledge already embodies Circularity approaches such as composting and farming. We also want our Pacific countries to put in place processes and policies that will enable a Circularity, which includes but is not limited to bans on products that we do not want, such as single-use plastics.

Actions are important however it requires a more concerted and coordinated approach that will help in the monitoring and reporting on the implementation progress of the Cleaner Pacific strategy. PacWastePlus has produced an M&R framework that can be adapted for our use. The Cleaner Pacific Strategy provides the framework for all partners, donors to work together as this is vital if we are going to minimize duplication and improve coordination between similar programmes and activities at the local, national and regional levels.

I would like to acknowledge the support of those that have gone before us and worked very hard to bring us to this point. I would also like to again thank you Prime Minister and the Government of Tuvalu for your leadership and the whole community for hosting us.

I thank and acknowledge all the Partners who contributed to this Roundtable, including the significant financial assistance of Australia, EU, Fonds Pacifique and, JICA (JPRISM3) which has enabled this Roundtable to take place. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions received from UNEP, World Bank, USAID, SPC, as well as the WMPC projects PacWastePlus, POLP, ISLANDS, PAWES, SWAP, PACPLAN and INC. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of the Roundtable Steering Committee and Chair PS. Pepetua Latasi for working with our team to make sure all the arrangements run as smoothly as possible.

Let me finish by encouraging you all to be frank in your deliberations – evaluate honestly, celebrate achievements, identify and troubleshoot problems and formulate your action plan for the remaining two years of the Framework. I also ask that you also deliberate and agree what you would like to see in the next Framework and start the process of its formulation. As I have shared, your work is not only important to you and your constituency or community of practice but also the overall work of SPREP and our regional 2050 Blue Pacific aspirations. 

I wish you the best for your discussions over the week, I know it will be highly productive and look forward to the Outcomes.

Vinaka and Fakafetai Lasi.