Back ||NOAA Home Statement on Behalf of the United States to the Oceans-related Ministerial Meeting By Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr. Vice-Admiral, US Navy (Ret) U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere April 26, 2002 Seoul, Korea Mr. Minister, Ministers, honorable colleagues, ladies and gentlemen: it is my pleasure to be here with you today to mark this important occasion—the first APEC Oceans Ministerial Meeting. I am Conrad Lautenbacher, U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. Allow me to take this opportunity on behalf of the United States to thank our hosts for their gracious hospitality. Everything possible has been arranged to facilitate a smooth and productive conference. When APEC last met to discuss oceans, it was in celebration of the International Year of the Ocean in 1998, in Hawaii. This year, our reason to meet is all the more compelling—to send a clear message to Johannesburg and to Los Cabos that oceans are an essential element of sustainable economic development for this region and the world. We must work together to realize the benefits to our economies. This Ministerial meeting, and APEC as a whole, are in a unique position to make this connection between oceans and our economic well-being and security. In this context, it is clear that sustainable development and poverty alleviation globally will depend to a large degree on how we pursue our stewardship of the world's oceans, coasts, and fisheries, and how we invest in improving our understanding of them. Within the last month, the United States released a forecast of the coming El Niño event. The fact that we can make such forecasts is a tribute to international cooperation in improving our collective understanding of the ocean and its contribution to weather and climate. Our ability to make this forecast is largely the result of deployment of an array of monitoring buoys across the equatorial Pacific ocean, combined with data collected by satellite. These forecasts can have a strong economic benefit—for example: Economists estimate that improved El Niño forecasts in the U.S. are worth nearly $300m annually. World wide, a lower bound estimate of annual economic benefits of improved forecasts is $450-$500 m per year. At least half of all commercial ocean transits today take advantage of weather-based vessel routing services, saving on the order of $300m per year. It is our view that by expanding our ocean observing efforts, we can achieve improved understanding of basin-wide cycles and their direct connection to sustainable fisheries and ecosystem management, and even greater economic benefits. We are already actively deploying the Argo buoy array globally, starting in the Pacific, and working with many of our APEC colleagues. Argo is a global array of 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats that will measure the temperature and salinity of the upper 2,000 m of the ocean. This will allow continuous monitoring of the broad-scale state of the ocean, with all data being relayed and made publicly available within hours after collection. Argo will extend our operational coverage beyond the tropical Pacific to include other El Niño-like phenomena, thus laying the basis for further improvements in forecasting. The Argo array is just one part of the global observing system generally referred to by their acronyms: GCOS, GOOS, CLIVAR and GODAE. The Global Climate Observing System/Global Ocean Observing System, called GCOS and GOOS, respectively, the climate variability and predictability experiment, called CLIVAR, and the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment, which is called GODAE. As Ministers representing the economies of the Asia Pacific region, we should commit to further develop and deploy these observing systems. A cooperative effort to deploy the buoys and other monitoring devices, to collect and manage the data, to share information, and to build capacity throughout the region to understand and use this information for economic benefits, would support the goals and objectives of APEC. The APEC region is a good place to start—we share a commitment to collaborative coastal and oceanic science which we should hold up as a model to our leaders and to the rest of the world. By 2025, it is estimated that about three-quarters of the world population will live in coastal areas. These people, and the economies which are their home, are dependent upon the health of marine and coastal ecosystems for their livelihoods, transportation, commerce and trade, tourism and export commodities, recreation and food. Healthy coastal and ocean ecosystems depend on sound management of upland and upstream ecosystems. Globally, 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based sources (such as agricultural and surface runoff, solid waste, and wastewater, industrial pollution, atmospheric deposition) and the remainder is from ocean-based sources. In effect, coastal areas, and the oceans, are the recipients of whatever happens upland and upstream. It is therefore essential to look beyond the coast to partnerships with other resource managers, environmental, industrial and urban planners, as well as investors and financial decision-makers. APEC provides a valuable opportunity for our economies to exchange information on domestic efforts to manage our coastal and marine ecosystems for responsible economic development. In particular, the United States is pleased that the Draft Seoul Declaration recognizes the need for further research, dialogue, and education on marine ecosystems and the ecosystem approach for management. APEC is an ideal forum for such regional efforts through activities such as workshops, exchanges and collaborative projects. The United States is pleased to announce that we will offer to host a workshop on this issue. We are confident that our colleagues around the table will actively participate. Thus, APEC is a valuable forum to discuss regional approaches, and to reach a regional consensus in preparation for global fora such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Because the ocean is so important to APEC, we should set the pace for implementation of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Code of Conduct and the related International Plans of Action, the Global Program of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities, and other priority international efforts, such as the elimination of Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported Fishing, as well as destructive fishing practices. In Doha last November, the World Trade Organization Ministers committed themselves to greater global market access for goods and services, including fisheries products. We believe responsible management and free trade go hand in hand. We must also remember the commitment of APEC Leaders in Shanghai to work together against terrorism and their call for APEC Working Groups to consider specific actions to contribute to this effort. It is my view that our final report should include direction to put this important item on the agenda for their upcoming meetings. Allow me to applaud the cooperative and constructive atmosphere that prevailed in the joint work of the Marine Senior Officials Meeting and the Fisheries Senior Officials Meeting in the last few days. I congratulate them on their work. We are confident that their dedicated efforts to reach consensus will set the tone for future APEC Ocean Ministerial Meetings. In closing, I express my appreciation to my colleagues around the table for this experience. I have learned much from this meeting and I have found our interaction to be highly productive in many important ways. Again, I express our appreciation to our hosts for setting such a high benchmark in holding this first APEC Ocean Ministerial Meeting. Thank you.