About NOWPAP CEARAC

What is NOWPAP?

The Action Plan for the Protection, Management and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the Northwest Pacific Region (NOWPAP), one of the Regional Seas Programmes (RSP) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was adopted at the First Intergovernmental Meeting (IGM) in September 1994 in Seoul, Korea. The member states of NOWPAP are the People’s Republic of China, Japan, the republic of Korea and Russian Federation.

The geographical coverage of NOWPAP is the marine environment and coastal zones from about 121o E to 143o E longitude, and from approximately 33o N to 52o N latitude. 

For smooth implementation of NOWPAP activities, Regional Activity Centres (RACs) were established in each member state between 2000 and 2002, and the Regional Coordinating Unit (RCU) were established in November 2004, which has two offices: one is in Toyama City, Japan and the other is in Busan City, Korea.

Basically, NOWPAP activities are implemented in a time span of two years. The IGM is held every year and the meeting review the progress of on-going activities as well as outcomes of the finished activities of the term. The meeting also discusses and adopts the workplan for the next biennium.

What is CEARAC?

In 1999, the Northwest Pacific Region Environmental Cooperation Center (NPEC) in Toyama, Japan was designated as the Special Monitoring & Coastal Environmental Assessment Regional Activity Centre (CEARAC), a RAC of Japan. CEARAC’s responsibility is, as its name tells, monitoring and assessing the marine and coastal environment of the NOWPAP region, providing the member states useful measures to improve the marine environment, and developing assessment and monitoring programmes and/or tools by using new monitoring techniques such as remote sensing. The seventh IGM (March 2002, Vladivostok, Russia) decided the prioritized activities of CEARAC, and two working groups (WG) of NOWPAP were established under CEARAC as follows:

The First NOWPAP CEARAC Focal Points Meeting (FPM) was held in February 2003. FPM is held annually to exchange information and to promote, coordinate and harmonize regional cooperation in the Northwest Pacific region. Focal Points (FPs) are the people who are either scientists of the marine environment or government officials of the four NOWPAP member states.

• Current list of FPs
• CEARAC Focal Points Meeting Report

As mentioned above, CEARAC’s main work is assessing the marine and coastal environment of the NOWPAP region and developing assessment methodologies by using special monitoring technologies. Since its inception, CEARAC has focused on harmful algal blooms (HABs), based on the IGM decisions, and collected and disseminate relevant information such as occurrence of and damages by red tides/HABs and practical measures to control and mitigate them. In 2006, NOWPAP initiated activities on marine litter, and the NOWPAP Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter (RAP MALI) was adopted by the Member States in 2008, under which the member states and the RACs have cooperated with each other to tackle this emerging problem. CEARAC is responsible for land-based marine litter and developed monitoring guide lines on the beach and guidelines for Tourists and Tour Operators. In addition, CEARAC collected information on the best practices for prevention of marine litter input from land-based sources in the NOWPAP region.

As for developing monitoring and assessment tools by remote sensing, CEARAC opened a website “Marine Environmental Watch” under the auspices of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan, and provided data, for example Sea surface temperature (SST) and phytoplankton (chlorophyll-a) in the NOWPAP region, which were observed by satellites. Up to 2006, WG3 and Wg4 meetings were held separately; however, in the occasion of launching new CEARAC activities on eutrophication, the joint meeting of WG3 and WG4 was held in 2008. Eutrophication is one of the serious environmental problems in the NOWPAP sea areas, and CEARAC developed Procedures for the assessment of eutrophication status including evaluation of land based sources of nutrients for the NOWPAP region (Common Procedures) in 2009. Since then, CEARAC has continued assessment of the status of eutrophication in each NOWPAP member state.

In 2010, the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 10) was held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, where the Aichi Targets to be achieved by 2020 was set. Upon this adoption, CEARAC expanded its working areas and has implemented related activities to contribute to conservation of marine biodiversity in the NOWPAP region, including but not limited to collecting and sharing information on marine protected areas in each member state, developing tools, especially GIS mapping tools for monitoring coastal ecosystem (seagrasses and tidal flats). At the same time, CEARAC provided training courses on remote sensing data analysis for conservation of the marine and coastal environment, targeting at young researchers and students. Moreover in recent years, CEARAC noticed significant progress in environmental DNA (eDNA) approach, and took up dissemination and utilization of the technique.

Current list of FPs