• All countries should build a reasonable domestic capacity for resilience and incident response

Sri Lanka as a small island nation has suffered several marine disasters in the 20th century, with the MT New Diamond tanker fire, and the MV X-Press Pearl being the most recent as worse in recorded history. Both incidents highlighted the need for Sri Lanka and the region to work collaboratively and improve capacity to prevent, reduce, respond and mitigate the impact of such large-scale pollution incidents in the Indian Ocean. With one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes set south of the island, Sri Lanka’s vulnerability to marine pollution cannot be understated.

Last month, the South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP) and the Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) of the UK Government jointly organised a regional capacity building programme on Marine Pollution Responses in the South Asian Seas Region, which was held last week at Cinnamon Grand, in Colombo. The landmark initiative seeks to bolster regional cooperation and readiness to address the critical issue of marine pollution, which Sri Lanka has had significant experience with following the recent maritime disasters.

The five-day workshop, which was conducted throughout last week had been designed to achieve several key goals, including – reinvigorate the SACEP Framework; evaluate existing capacities and progress made by countries, while identifying barriers to implementation; enhance national-Level discussions; provide a platform to assess gaps in readiness, explore opportunities for mutual aid, and promote better regional collaboration and coordination. Also, it supported participants to learn from global best practices; share lessons from incidents; highlight best practices, and identify training needs to strengthen regional expertise; and develop future plans; establish the groundwork to update the South Asian Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP) regional plan, ensuring a long-lasting and effective partnership. The programme was supported by the Ocean Country Partnership Programme, funded through Official Development Assistance (ODA) under the UK’s Blue Planet Fund.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Morning, Senior Programme Officer of SACEP W.K. Rathnadeera to discuss how SACEP facilitates regional and national ocean pollution control efforts and helps to build closer links between them for effective coordination and cooperation for incident response.  

Following are excerpts from the interview:

Can you briefly explain what type of organisation SACEP is and what does it do?

The South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP) is an intern-government organisation established 1982 by eight South Asian countries, with the secretariat based in Colombo to promote regional co-operation on matters related to the environment. The secretariat is hosted by the Sri Lankan Government. Our role is coordination and facilitation among countries to come into common understanding and share their experiences and resources on matters related to the environment. We also work to bring in new technology and skills related to the environment into the region.

We also have a special programme called the South Asian Seas Programme (SASP) where five maritime countries are members; Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Pakistan. Under SASP we address all marine environmental-related issues, including ocean pollution; these include oil and chemical spills. The programme also looks at marine biodiversity, migratory species and so on.

The current Programme which SACEP is involved in related ocean pollution control was there an observation which identified this as a pressing requirement?

It was observed that there is a need for regional cooperation and coordination for better ocean pollution control, especially for oil and chemical spills.

Earlier, SACEP established a regional oil spill contingency plan, and according to that plan. We were developing the regional oil spill contingency plan in partnership with the International Maritime Organisation (IOM), and we recognised this need. Because countries have already signed memorandums of understanding for cooperation on the matter. As such, countries had formulated their own National Oil Spill Containment Plans (NOSCOP). The regional plan SACEP established laid the groundwork for India to assist Sri Lanka during the MT New Diamond and MV X-Press Pearl incidents.

Is it correct that SACEP played a role in helping Sri Lanka develop our national oil spill contingency plan?

Yes, to increase Sri Lanka’s opportunities to obtain assistance, to contain and mitigate oil spills in the open sea, from countries in the region there was a need for a well-crafted national plan.

Given the importance of the subject being addressed, are you satisfied with participation and support from the member states for the Regional Capacity Building Programme on Marine Pollution Responses for South Asian Seas Region?

Yes, we are. We see a lot of enthusiasm from the states and the participants. In our system, we invited nominees from our national focal point which is the Ministry of Environment of each partner nation. They selected people who were working on the subject not only from one agency but from multiple agencies. For example, from Sri Lanka we had officials from NARA, MEPA, from the Ministries of Environment and from Fisheries, from the Ministry of Ports, the Coast Guard, the Department of Wildlife and others. There is much enthusiasm, and they bring different experiences and knowledge to the forum.

We can see that India is best resourced and is well ahead in terms of capacity and capability. I am glad that when our regional mechanism is used, there is a good opportunity for members to share resources and use each other’s experience and expertise. For a small country like Sri Lanka, it is not possible to have all the necessary resources and capacities in house to independently address a large pollution incident like that of the MV X-Press Pearl disaster. It is very costly to buy and maintain the necessary equipment and systems in the numbers needed to respond to such a pollution incident. Therefore, it is cost effective to share resources among regional countries.

Is it important for each country to have some sovereign capacity or perhaps some resources which are plentiful in one country can be forward deployed in another country for quick access near incident hotspots?

Each country will have to develop their own capacity to a certain level. For different pollution incidents of different levels there are different levels of response. There are several tiers of incidents. Countries should have domestic capacity to face at least the lower tier incidents, the smaller ones. In the case of larger incidents, resources from the region can be pooled. I think in the last two major incidents related to Sri Lanka, India deployed assets and resources to help Sri Lanka.

In terms of capacity building programmes such as what was organised, what are the outcomes you look for?

We would like to see a holistic development. Yes, we want resilience building and better emergency preparedness. Also, emergency preparedness needs longitudinal support and structures. An important aspect of what we do is to ensure that there are experienced and skilled officials in the public sector on this topic. As you know, public service officials move departments, some retire, so we want to keep the competencies current. We also want to see an improvement in regional cooperation.