The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has kick-started a major five-year project to help protect marine biodiversity through a coordinated effort to address biofouling not just from shipping but from all marine sectors.
The IMO-executed GloFouling Partnerships project was launched at a workshop held March 18-20 at the IMO Headquarters in London, United Kingdom.
The project—a collaboration between the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and IMO—aims to address bioinvasions by organisms which can build up on ships’ hulls and other marine structures.
Representatives from 12 lead partnering countries, four regional organizations, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO), World Ocean Council (WOC), and numerous strategic partners attended the first Global Project Task Force meeting for the GloFouling Partnerships project.
“This milestone event marks the real start of this exciting project, the first-ever globally coordinated effort to address biofouling—not just from shipping, but from all marine sectors,” said Jose Matheickal, representing IMO’s Marine Environment Division.
National administrations and regional international government organizations will work with the project to analyze their needs and develop baseline and economic assessments that will help decision makers draft new policies or action plans to implement the Biofouling Guidelines issued by the IMO in 2011.
To support this process, the project will manage demonstration sites, provide institutional capacity building, and develop awareness-raising campaigns geared toward all relevant maritime industries, including recreational boating.
When invasive aquatic organisms are introduced into new marine environments, it not only affects biodiversity and ecosystem health, but also a number of economic sectors such as fisheries, aquaculture, and ocean energy.
“Addressing invasive aquatic species is not only a matter of ensuring the health and integrity of marine ecosystems, but ultimately about safeguarding ecosystem services that sustain the livelihoods of coastal communities across the globe,” said IMO. The GloFouling project will help meet a number of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 14 on the oceans.
The 12 countries spearheading the work of the GloFouling project represent a mix of developing nations and small island developing states: Brazil, Ecuador, Fiji, Indonesia, Jordan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Tonga. Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Sweden also contribute to the project as strategic partners.
Some of the next steps expected from the GloFouling project will include setting up national task forces in the 12 countries and launching the Global Industry Alliance for Marine Biosafety as a vehicle for enhanced partnership between the public sector and the maritime industry, and the alignment of public, NGO and commercial activities towards common goals.
The GEF, through UNDP, is providing a US$6.9 million grant to deliver a range of governance reforms at the national level, through numerous capacity-building activities, training workshops and opportunities for technology adoption to help address the issue of invasive species.
While IMO will focus on shipping, IOC-UNESCO will join the three main partners (GEF, UNDP, IMO) to lead the development in other marine sectors of best practices that may address the transfer of invasive aquatic species through improved biofouling management.
The work of the GloFouling Project is divided into five major components:
- Legal, policy and institutional reforms developed and implemented to minimize the risk of invasive aquatic species transferred through biofouling.
- Capacity building and technical support for the implementation of the 2011 Biofouling Guidelines and best practices for biofouling management in other ocean industries.
- Public-private partnerships to bring active private sector participation at global, regional, national and local levels, to support the development of innovative technological and other solutions and financial sustainability for the control and management of biofouling.
- Knowledge management systems and enhanced stakeholder and institutional cooperation for monitoring and evaluation of biofouling management and control measures.
- Monitoring and evaluation.
Photo courtesy of IMO
