SPF諸国による気候変動問題をめぐる地域的アプローチ : SPREPを中心として

In these days, the member countries of the South Pacific Forum (SPF) have paid sepcial attention to climate change, notably global warming, which would bring serious effects to the Pacific Island States surrounded by the ocean. To tackle this problem, the SPF Countries have attempted to reflect their interests through some channels to the formation of international regime on climate change. As the first step to analyse their attempt, this paper focuses on the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and investigates their regional approach through SPREP. SPREP was set up in 1980 as a cooperative programme of the South Pacific Commission, the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation, UNEP and ESCAP. However, it was short of effectiveness because of unautonomy of the organisation. At the initiative of the SPF Countries, SPREP became an autonomous independent regional body in 1991. The SPF Countries formed a unified regional approach to climate change as a result of the first regional conference on climate change held in Majuro, the Marshall Islands, in 1989. Their regional approach was consolidated at the fourth SPREP intergovernmental meeting in New Caledonia in 1991. At the second SPREP meeting on climate change and sea level rise in New Caledonia in 1992, the SPF Countries made a final preparation for UNCED, where they gained substantial results. Regional approach of the SPF Countries to climate change through SPREP indicates a new direction of the SPF regional cooperation. The SPF Countries start to use SPF as a coordinating body for cooperation in other levels as well as regional one. This new direction would grow further, for a good example, in their approach to Global Conference on the Sustainable Developemnt of Small Island Developing States which will be held in Barbados in April 1994.