PACSICOM CONTRIBUTIONS

The Pan-African Conference on Sustainable Integral Coastal Management (PACSICOM), organized by the Mozambique Government in Maputo from 18 to 24 July 1998 in partnership with Finland, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCE) and UNESCO, led for the first time to the adoption of a united African position on integrated coastal management and represented a major contribution by Africa to the celebration of the International Year of the Ocean.

Concluding their work, the Ministers of the Environment and the representatives of more than 40 African countries attending the Conference expressed in a joint declaration their political commitment to do all in their power to halt the degradation of the African coastline, by means of a five-year action plan for integrated coastal management in Africa. In adopting the Maputo Declaration , the African Member States expressed their commitment to review their national policies and programmes in the light of the existing conventions and agreements on the preservation of the coastal environment, in particular those stemming from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In the five-year action plan, the Member States decided to include priority actions such as those concerning the strengthening of the existing institutional and legal framework for integrated coastal management, the need to involve civil society at all levels, NGOs and the private sector in the design and implementation of these policies, better education on coastal and maritime issues, improving the collection and sharing of scientific information and subregional, regional and international cooperation, the promotion of demonstration projects and programmes and the need to provide long-term financing both in State budgets and thanks to support from funding agencies.