The representatives from the People’s Republic of China, Japan, Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation pledged to further enhance the regional cooperation on marine and coastal environmental protection in the Third Extraordinary Intergovernmental Meeting of the Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP).
The meeting was organized online by the NOWPAP Regional Coordinating Unit (RCU) on January 27, 2021. It was attended by the governmental officials, researchers from the region, NOWPAP Regional Activity Centres (RACs), UNEP, including several UNEP-administered Regional Seas Programmes and Action Plans, and the Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA).
The governmental representatives of the NOWPAP Member States committed to further strengthening the regional cooperation to protect the shared marine environment and manage its natural resources sustainably by engaging neighbouring countries in comprehensive and specific national and regional initiatives and actions. They also stressed the important role of NOWPAP in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The meeting reviewed the progress of implementing the Northwest Pacific Action Plan and discussed schedules to complete the Regional Action Plan on Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Conservation, NOWPAP Communication Strategy, promotion video, special projects on microplastic assessment and key indicator species, etc.
A special session of the meeting was devoted to discussing the NOWPAP operation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the risks posed by the pandemic, the scheduled NOWPAP Intergovernmental Meeting in February 2020 could not be organized and had to be postponed. In the inter-sessional period, the Member States approved the work plan and budget for 2020-2021 by correspondence, what paved the way for the NOWPAP Regional Activity Centres and NOWPAP RCU to start implementing activities included on the NOWPAP Programme of Work 2020-2021. This meeting requested RCU further to support the Regional Activity 
Centres and nominated national experts to achieve their goals of the NOWPAP Mid-Term Strategy 2018-2023. The meeting also requested introducing and applying innovative ways of working, such as various channels of communications and collaboration tools or technology to complete the planned activities on time.
The meeting discussed the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework of the NOWPAP Medium-Term Strategy 2018-2023 and requested RCU to prepare a positioning paper on an a
ssessment of the modus operandi of NOWPAP RACs and the collaboration between RCU and RACs, and how to
improve the overall operation of NOWPAP and operation of individual RACs, for the consideration by the 24th IGM.
The meeting agreed that China would host the 24th NOWPAP Intergovernmental Meeting at the end of 2021 virtually.
