Leaders from seven Pacific Island countries are gathering in Kokopo, East New Britain Province to conduct discussions on high-level topics before the 8th Tuna Forum in Port Moresby next week.
Host province Governor, Michael Marum and provincial government officials welcomed the first group of leaders and delegates starting on Saturday evening. The rest of the meeting parties arrived Sunday morning in Kokopo.
Two meetings will take place in Kokopo: the Forum Fisheries Committee meeting to discuss the United States Treaty regarding funds distribution and the East New Britain (ENB) Initiative.
National Fisheries Authority managing director, Justin Ilakini says, “We are hoping that we can reach some sort of agreement at the officials level before we can elevate it to our leaders, our fisheries ministers level on the 4th of September.
“Our minister will be representing PNG at the meeting to see if we can broker a deal between our memberships within the Pacific island countries. So we can see a much fairer distribution of that fund going towards the development of our smaller Pacific island parties,” said Ilakini.
He says the ENB Initiative will provide a platform for all fisheries ministers in the Pacific to have an avenue of dialogue amongst themselves to address two key issues of Climate Change and an initiative to tap into opportunities to maximize economic returns from the tuna resource.
“We are hoping that as a result, leaders will use this platform to identify practical ways of implementing our forum leader’s development aspirations as contained in the Pacific plan or blue Pacific continent,” said Ilakini.
Minister for Fisheries and Marine Resources, Jelta Wong, who is hosting the ENB Initiative said, “The Pacific island ministers agreed to come here so they could support the initiative to push out. Every year we lose in IUU fishing close to 45 million US dollars.
He added, “We want to tap into ways and initiatives to try to stop these types of illegal stuff happening. Initiative that we are trying to achieve here is the initiative that’s going to allow us to control stocks and see what fish is going out and it’s a good initiative because it involves the whole Pacific.”
Both leaders expressed the hope to see the leaders who will be attending the meeting collaborate and drive the interests of Pacific Island countries into the future.