Welcoming Remarks by Pacific Ocean Commissioner Dr Filimon Manoni
At the Pacific Islands Regional Legal BBNJ Workshop, held at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat: 28 – 30 January 2026
Representative of the Pacific Islands Forum Chair, Senior Officials, Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Alii and warm Pacific greetings to you all!
It is my great pleasure as the Pacific Ocean Commissioner to welcome you all to this inaugural Pacific Islands Regional Legal BBNJ Workshop.
Let me first extend my sincere gratitude to the representatives of the Pacific Islands Forum Chair here with us today from the Solomon Islands High Commission who have been unwavering in their support of our work on oceans.
Let me also extend a very warm Pacific welcome to all our esteemed government and legal representatives joining us today in person from the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, our host country Fiji, the Republic of Kiribati, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
A warm welcome to our friends joining us virtually from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water of Australia, and from French Polynesia.
It is indeed our great privilege and honour as your Secretariat to host 14 Member countries from around the region at this Regional Legal BBNJ Workshop and we thank you for your continued support and commitment to the region’s work and our shared priorities on oceans governance in support of our Leaders’ Ocean Agenda.
At the outset, please let me also apologise and convey my regrets for not being able to join you in person this week. A number of pressing issues have come to the fore recently that requires my attention here at your OPOC head office in Palau, and I regret that I was not able to travel there to Suva for this auspicious occasion.
However, I am also at ease with the knowledge that you have supporting you workshop in Suva this next three days is the OPOC Team, a cohort of extremely capable BBNJ experts, not only to support the work and share knowledge, but importantly to learn from each of you, as you are indeed experts in your own rights. I will also be online to join the proceedings.
Foremost, this year 2026 has no doubt started off on a high note for us oceans enthusiasts and advocates. The coming into force on the BBNJ Agreement on 17
January 2026 has not only reinvigorated our passion and perseverance for all things oceans, but it has also encouraged us to continue the momentum to strengthen regional coordination, information sharing and awareness on the BBNJ Agreement in the context of our own Pacific.
An important part of that momentum is this Pacific Islands Regional Legal BBBJ Workshop, which as you will understand has been in the works for a number of months now and while the early convening of this workshop in January may start your new year with a bang or with some dread, we hope that you will walk away from this
Workshop with more information and understanding of the different approaches to the domestication of the BBNJ Agreement in the different countries.
We feel that this workshop will be crucial for us as Pacific legal advisors and policy makers to have an opportunity to discuss strategy and explore different approaches as to how we can begin to tackle the issue of domesticating and implementing the BNJ Agreement at the national level.
We trust that this workshop will give you, the participants and policy makers an added incentive in laying the groundwork in your own jurisdictions looking ahead to domesticating the BBNJ Agreement. We trust that this information sharing platform will give you an opportunity to hear from other regions and other countries in our region on their experiences in terms of strategies to domesticate and implement the BBNJ Agreement at the national level.
Indeed, in the last year alone, OPOC hosted at least seven (7) national workshops on the BBNJ Agreement in the Pacific. While those workshops were effective in informing and raising awareness for government officials in our region, this Legal BBNJ Workshop, stems from your feedback and a shared understanding that as we begin to pivot towards the domestication and implementation phase of the BBNJ Agreement, that there is a need to create more opportunities and information sharing platforms specifically targeted towards you our legal professionals in your national governments.
Therefore, as your Secretariat, we have crafted the programme for the next three days to offer you a wide range of perspectives from international legal experts from our region, seasoned BBNJ negotiators, international institutions and our regional institutions and CROP Teams that work across the BBNJ landscape.
We also hope to offer you perspectives from our own neighbours Palau, PNG, Cook Islands and Australia, who have begun the groundwork on the domestication process and from other regions such as the ASEAN region and our speakers will also offer a global perspective on this issue. It is my hope that these experiences will give all of us more insights and understanding of the global efforts that are underway in the different regions and jurisdictions to domestic the BBNJ Agreement.
To conclude, I look forward very much to our discussions these next three days. I understand it is a packed agenda but let us keep an open mind and not be shy to engage meaningfully. There is no right or wrong answer here, but our goal here is that at the end of these discussions, we can take with us these regional and national experiences and see how we can design and enact laws that implement the objectives of the BBNJ Agreement meaningfully in our own jurisdictions.
With those few words, let me wish you all a successful and productive workshop.
Sulang!
Keynote Address by the Representative of the Pacific Islands Forum Chair – Solomon Islands
At the Pacific Islands Regional Legal BBNJ Workshop, held at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat: 28 – 30 January 2026
Pacific Ocean Commissioner,
Senior Officials, Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Halo and warm Pacific greetings to you all as well!
It is my great pleasure as the representative of the Chair of Pacific Islands Forum – Solomon Islands, to join the Pacific Ocean Commissioner in welcoming and delivering a keynote address to this Pacific Islands Regional Legal BBNJ Workshop.
As custodians and stewards of the largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific Ocean. Our own culture, identity and our sustenance is tied to the state of our oceans. As such our commitment to the work on oceans must be consistent and our efforts, united.
Especially in relation to the BBNJ Agreement, our efforts must remain consistent, this is a space where our own Pacific negotiations have spent close to 20 years being actively engaged in, from its inception, its negotiations, to its adoption and now its coming in force on 17 January 2026.
In this next phase of the work on the BBNJ Agreement, our focus now also shifts to the implementation of the BBNJ Agreement and as the Pacific Ocean Commissioner stated earlier, we must now also pivot to the implementation and domestication of the BBNJ Agreement at the national level.
Therefore, I’m pleased OPOC is convening this auspicious workshop where we have gathered legal representatives from our region and our policy makers to begin to shape and to also share ideas and mould strategies that will be an integral part of launching us in to the next phase of the BBNJ Agreement on the regional and national level.
Let me formally acknowledge and thank the presence of the representatives of the following countries Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, our host country Fiji, the Republic of Kiribati, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
I would also like to formally acknowledge and thank our friends joining us virtually from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water of Australia, and from French Polynesia.
I also acknowledge the presence of CROP and Pacific Ocean Alliance Stakeholders on their continued support to our Members through OPOC’s coordinated efforts. Forum Leaders have called on the Pacific Ocean Commissioner and OPOC to coordinate efforts to support our Members on BBNJ. We are indeed grateful to see all stakeholders supporting our Members aspirations.
I also take this time to thank our Secretariat, the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commission for all their hard work and for hosting this gathering in just the 3rd week of the new year.
It is fitting that we gather here over these next three days in a united effort to brainstorm, share ideas and draw up a plan on how we can effectively implement the BBNJ Agreement. Of course, we will continue to actively engage in the international meetings such as the PREPCOM Meetings and upcoming COP Meetings given that they will also greatly inform these discussions, but it is salient on our end to create these information sharing platforms and to cultivate networking amongst our Members and our international and regional organisations to be able to inform the discussions at the national level.
At the end of the day, our main goal is to equip our Members with the information and resources to be able to strategize and to implement our global commitments in relation to oceans governance.
While some of you may not get all the answers here at this workshop, it is my hope that useful networks are created here, relationships are built and information is gathered and shared here that will be useful and helpful to you in your role as policy makers and legal advocates for the BBNJ Agreement back home in your official capacities.
I understand that you will also be able to leave here at the end of this workshop with a roadmap on the regional implementation of the BBNJ agreement and a shared understanding of how we can effectively strategize to implement the BBNJ Agreement at the national level, and for those of who have yet to complete the ratification process, it is my hope that the knowledge gained here at this legal workshop will give you confidence and equip you to bring that work to completion.
All in all, this workshop is a good place to pick up our efforts on the BBNJ momentum in the region and to equip and reinvigorate our advocacy on the BBNJ agreement for our Blue Pacific Continent.
I very much look forward to our discussions these next three days, and I hereby officially open this Pacific Islands Regional Legal BBNJ Workshop.
Tanggio tumas!
