Invited as an observer, NOWPAP representative attended the 17th Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) of the North-East Asian Sub-regional Programme for Environmental Cooperation (NEASPEC) held on 20-21 December 2012 in Chengdu, China. As all NOWPAP member states are also members of NEASPEC, NOWPAP has been watching closely the developments of NEASPEC in order to find issues of mutual interest for cooperative activities and to avoid any possible duplicated efforts in the region.
As the meeting approved a proposal for launching a project on Northeast Asian marine protected areas (MPAs) network to which NOWPAP has contributed during the preparation of the project proposal, NEASPEC has been invited to co-organize a workshop on marine biodiversity conservation and marine protected areas to be hosted by the NOWPAP Special Monitoring and Coastal Environmental Assessment Regional Activity Centre on 13-14 March 2013 in Toyama, Japan. NEASPEC has suggested one session and will dispatch experts to the workshop, which will be held as a joint event of NOWPAP and NEASPEC.
