Scores of environmental officials and representatives from Pacific islands and federal agencies yesterday convened at the Pacific Islands Club to develop a regional strategy to address the degradation of coral reef ecosystems, fisheries and marine water quality.<\/p>\n
Participating federal agencies include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n
Marina A. Picolish, PhD., of the Hawaii-based MAPping Change, LLC, the consulting firm that designed the meeting\u2019s agenda, said the conference aims to develop a regional strategy that would strengthen the voice of Pacific and Carribean islands at the federal government, especially in procuring financial support to address environmental concerns.<\/p>\n
The All Islands Coastal Zone Conference 2004 seeks to have local and federal agencies arrive at strategic priorities for coastal management for the next five to 10 years.<\/p>\n
The agencies earlier underscored the importance of an effective public awareness campaign, setting the development of a community education strategy as one of their priorities. They also highlighted the importance of an information strategy for political leaders in efforts to get political support.<\/p>\n
Coastal Resources Management Office director Joaquin D. Salas and deputy director Steve Tilley led the CNMI\u2019s environmental officials and representatives in the conference.<\/p>\n
The conference would continue today, when the EPA and NOAA are set to hold a joint session on exploring relationships among theirs and the islands\u2019 programs.<\/p>\n
NOAA\u2019s Office of Coastal Resources Management program specialist Jonathan Kelsey and EPA\u2019s Pacific Islands Office manager John McCarroll would be joining the panel discussion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scores of environmental officials and representatives from Pacific islands and federal agencies yesterday convened at the Pacific Islands Club to develop a regional strategy to address the degradation of coral reef ecosystems, fisheries and marine water quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}