On 17 April 2017, Mr. Serpa Soares, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and United Nations Legal Counsel, delivered opening remarks at the eighth meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group of the Whole on the Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects (“the Regular Process”). The Regular Process was established by the General Assembly following the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg, South Africa (GA res. 57/141). The role of the Ad hoc Working Group of the Whole on the Regular Process is to oversee and guide the Regular Process, whose first cycle ended in 2015, culminating in the release of the First Global Integrated Marine Assessment (World Ocean Assessment I)

The eighth meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group of the Whole was convened pursuant to General Assembly resolution 71/257 to consider the Technical Abstracts prepared by the members of the Group of Experts in accordance with the programme of work for the period 2017-2020 for the second cycle of the Regular Process. These Technical Abstracts serve to highlight for policy-makers the key elements of World Ocean Assessment I that relate to intergovernmental processes, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, General Assembly resolution 69/292: Development of an international legally-binding instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ Process), the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC Process), and the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (ICP).