Convention for the Protection of the Natural Resources and Environment of the South Pacific Region (Noumea Convention / SPREP Convention)

The Noumea Convention was adopted at Noumea, New Caledonia in 1986 and entered into force, together with its original two protocols, in 1990. It is administered by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, headquartered in Samoa, and it is described by that Secretariat as the major multilateral umbrella agreement in the Pacific Region for the protection of natural resources and the environment. It provides the legal backbone for a regional Action Plan agreed in 1982 at the South Pacific Conference on Human Environment.

It is the Pacific's own chapter of a global system rather than an isolated regional gesture. The Convention is the Pacific component of the UN Environment Programme's Regional Seas Programme, launched in 1972, which addresses ocean and coastal degradation worldwide through regionally tailored legal frameworks. Pacific Island states built their own binding instrument under that programme rather than deferring to instruments written elsewhere, and they did so before the environmental provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea were in force.

Protection is delivered through targeted protocols rather than one generic prohibition. The original two address dumping, aligned with the International Maritime Organization's global dumping convention, and pollution emergencies. Two further protocols, on oil pollution and on hazardous and noxious substances, were adopted in 2006 and had not entered into force when this archive was built in August 2026. The structure lets the region add binding detail as new threats appear without reopening the base treaty.

Governance is continuing rather than a one-time signing. Parties meet every two years to assess the actual state of the Pacific marine environment, to consider joint action, and to take whatever additional steps the Convention's purposes require. Twelve Pacific Island countries and territories are parties, and the administering body is a regional environmental authority built and run by the Pacific states themselves rather than a UN agency headquartered elsewhere. The complete text and protocols are published by SPREP.