United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Thank you Madame Chair:
UNDP recognizes the critical role healthy oceans play in sustaining development and in poverty reduction and is strongly committed to supporting our programme content to realize SDG14.
As of today, 29 UNDP supported initiatives have been entered in the Voluntary Commitments registry.
At local level, the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) supports communities to better protect coastal ecosystems. Initiatives since September 2015 have placed 32,560 hectares of coastal areas under community-based conservation.
At the national level, UNDP has helped to establish and strengthen Marine Protected Areas in eight countries through seven projects drawing on $42 million in GEF and Adaptation Fund grants. Collectively these cover an area of 620,850 hectares.
Through the Global Marine Commodities program, UNDP is assisting Ecuador, Costa Rica, Indonesia, and the Philippines to transform seafood supply chains to improve sustainability, and, through the GEF Coastal Fisheries Initiative, UNDP is supporting improved management and governance of small scale fisheries in Ecuador and Peru.
A sizeable fraction of UNDP’s commitments support multi-country efforts to sustainable ocean use in many of the world’s Large Marine Ecosystems. With GEF, EU and programme country financing, UNDP is assisting 27 countries in the implementation of Strategic Action Programmes in seven LMEs.
At the global level, UNDP, GEF and IMO are partnering in the new ‘GloFouling’ project which will assist countries to reduce risks from invasive species transported via biofouling of ship hulls and other mobile marine infrastructure.
In sum, these local, national, regional and global UNDP programmes represent over $121 million in voluntary commitments. UNDP looks forward to working with a wide range of government, intergovernmental, United Nations, donor, NGO and other partners to expand and deliver these commitments.