Regional Policy Dialogue: Harnessing the Sustainable Ocean Economy in South East Asia

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) held a Regional Policy Dialogue on “Harnessing the sustainable ocean economy in South East Asia” as part of its work to support partner countries in the region. The Dialogue was held on 3-4 December in Bali, Indonesia and co-hosted with the Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Investments of Indonesia, in co-operation with COBSEA. The Dialogue provided an opportunity to exchange on policy challenges and solutions to promote a sustainable ocean economy in South East Asia. It brought together officials from various Indonesian ministries and agencies, national governments from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Viet Nam, finance institutions, private sector, not-for-profit organizations and academia. The Dialogue forged new partnerships and showcased projects and initiatives that can feed into and scale up good practice in the region.

The Dialogue consisted of four substantive sessions:

• Session 1: Emerging findings from OECD´s Sustainable Ocean Economy Country Diagnostics of Indonesia
• Session 2: Mapping ongoing initiatives and its implications for South East Asia
• Session 3: Enhancing financing for sustainable ocean economies in South East Asia
• Session 4: The plastic challenge: Financing and new solutions for reducing marine plastic pollution.

A number of themes emerged from the Dialogue, that are presented in a summary report:

• The sustainable ocean economy in South-East Asia has tremendous untapped potential.
• Strong political leadership, good governance and effective coordination at both the national and regional level are essential to progress on the implementation of policies to lead towards a sustainable ocean economy.
• To enhance the sustainable ocean economy, innovative financial instruments and capacity development are needed to leverage existing traditional measures.
• Key challenges to the ocean environment – and therefore the ongoing sustainability of ocean-based industries – are the land-based activities that significantly contribute to pollution and degradation of the coastal and marine areas.

Slides from the meeting can be found here.

The summary report is available here.