MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION - Annual Report for 1998 



With respect to the protected area system, the 

 Committee noted that all of the Consultative Parties 

 had not yet approved Recommendation XVI- 10 

 (Protocol Armex V regarding area protection and 

 management) and that management plans have not 

 been proposed or updated for many of the Specially 

 Protected Areas and Sites of Special Scientific Interest 

 designated under the system that will be replaced by 

 Annex V. The Committee recommended that the 

 Treaty Parties call upon those that have not approved 

 the recommendation to do so as soon as possible and 

 to request that those parties who proposed Specially 

 Protected Areas and Sites of Special Scientific Interest 

 designated under the previous system develop or 

 update management plans for those areas as called for 

 in Annex V and to provide a timetable for doing so at 

 the Consultative Meeting in Lima, Peru, in 1999. 

 The Committee also reviewed and recommended 

 approval of management plans for several historic 

 sites as described below. 



Immediately before the Committee meeting, a 

 workshop was held to review and determine steps that 

 could be taken to improve the Antarctic Protected 

 Areas System. The results of the workshop were 

 reported to the Committee. Among other things, the 

 workshop participants noted the following: 



• there currently is no framework strategy or guide- 

 lines for identifying and affording special protec- 

 tion to areas representing the range of values set 

 forth in Article 3 of Annex V; and 



• there is a pressing need to develop or update 

 management plans for existing Specially Protected 

 Areas and Sites of Special Scientific Interest in 

 accordance with Article 5 of Annex V. 



The Committee considered the workshop findings 

 and, as noted earlier, provided advice to the Consulta- 

 tive Parties on measures needed to effectively imple- 

 ment Protocol Annex V. The Committee also recom- 

 mended that a second workshop be held immediately 

 before the 1999 Treaty Meeting in Peru to develop 

 guidelines for identifying additional areas meriting 

 special protection in accordance with Article 3 of 

 Protocol Annex V. The Committee also finalized and 

 recommended that the Treaty Parties endorse and 

 make their nationals aware of the availability of the 



Guide to the Preparation of Management Plans for 

 Antarctic Specially Protected Areas . 



At the prior Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting 

 in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1997 the New 

 Zealand delegation noted that Article 12 of the Proto- 

 col on Environmental Protection calls upon the 

 Committee for Environmental Protection to provide 

 advice on the state of the Antarctic environment. To 

 provide the basis for that advice, the New Zealand 

 Delegation proposed that the Treaty Parties coopera- 

 tively support development of a status report on the 

 Antarctic environment. The United States and others 

 questioned whether the usefulness of such a report 

 would justify the time, persormel, and financial 

 investment that would be required to produce it. It 

 was agreed that, during the intersessional period 

 before the Consultative Meeting in 1998, New Zea- 

 land would organize and chair an open-ended corre- 

 spondence group to prepare a "concept" paper that 

 could be considered at the 1998 Consultative Meeting. 



The concept paper developed by New Zealand 

 during the intersessional period was tabled at the 

 meeting of the Committee for Environmental Protec- 

 tion. It failed to address the range of questions that 

 had been raised during the Consultative Meeting in 

 New Zealand in 1997. Further, it did not clearly 

 reflect points that had been raised by the United States 

 during the intersessional correspondence. In this 

 regard, the U.S. delegation pointed out that site- 

 specific monitoring programs, such as those being 

 developed to document the environmental impacts of 

 U.S. stations in Antarctica, very well could be more 

 useful and more cost-effective than a general state of 

 the environment report. It was agreed that an open- 

 ended correspondence group, chaired by Sweden, 

 would consider the matter further and report back to 

 the Committee in 1999. 



The Committee also established an open-ended 

 correspondence group to work during the interses- 

 sional period to develop guidelines for meeting the 

 requirements of Protocol Annex I regarding environ- 

 mental impact assessment. This group, chaired by 

 Argentina, is to report to the Committee at its meeting 

 in 1999. The Environmental Officer at the National 

 Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs 

 provides U.S. input to both correspondence groups. 



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