The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and Asian LMEs: A commentary

摘要

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) leads international efforts to defeat hunger, working with partners, and member countries through its five regional offices including the Regional Office for Asia Pacific (RAP). FAO's goals and strategic objectives along with its mandate in fisheries and aquaculture are complementary with the Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) approach. With respect to fisheries and aquaculture and LMEs, FAO works with member countries and regional bodies to promote implementation of key frameworks such as the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) and its associated instruments. FAO promotes multidisciplinary approaches such as ecosystem approaches in fisheries and aquaculture, Blue Growth and Source to Sea amongst others. These are all well supportive to the LME approach. FAO is the implementing agency for two Global Environment Facility (GEF) International Waters (IW) projects in the region (the Bay of Bengal LME and the Indonesian Sea LME). Both projects bring together their participating countries with the objective of strengthening regional cooperation for ocean governance, developing capacity in natural resource management (fisheries and aquaculture), improving ecosystem health, contributing to Global Environmental Benefits and socio-economic conditions and achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.