The 28th Senior Officials Meeting (SOM-28) of the North-East Asian Subregional Programme for Environmental Cooperation (NEASPEC), an intergovernmental cooperation framework comprising six Northeast Asian countries, was held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on September 22–23.
※ NEASPEC, launched in 1993, is the only comprehensive intergovernmental framework for environmental cooperation in the Northeast Asian region, with six member countries: the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, Russia, Mongolia, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
More than 50 participants attended the meeting, including delegations from all six member countries as well as officials from international organizations such as the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) headquarters and its Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia, which serves as the NEASPEC secretariat. The Korean delegation was led by Cho Gye Yoen, Deputy Director-General for Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Scientific Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and consisted of officials and experts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Korea Forest Service, the National Institute of Ecology, and the National Air Emission Inventory and Research Center.
The member states reviewed ongoing NEASPEC projects and activities across its five priority areas—△air pollution, △biodiversity and nature conservation, △marine protected areas, △low-carbon cities, and △desertification and land degradation—and examined the 2026 work plan and the 2026–2030 Strategic Plan.
Deputy Director-General Cho outlined the Korean government’s policies on expanding renewable energy and achieving carbon neutrality and expressed Korea’s intention, as this year’s APEC Chair, to promote regional cooperation on sustainability. She also highlighted Korea’s concrete contributions to advancing key NEASPEC agenda items, including △strengthening domestic policies and cross-border collaboration to reduce air pollution, △playing a central role in initiatives to conserve migratory bird habitat connectivity, △pursuing the expansion of domestic marine protected areas, and △advancing Korea–Mongolia forest cooperation projects. She emphasized that Korea will continue to work closely with member states to further progress under NEASPEC.
Through the adoption of the outcome document, member states recognized NEASPEC’s role in enhancing environmental cooperation in Northeast Asia and reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening regional cooperation toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, they adopted the 2026–2030 NEASPEC Strategic Plan, which sets goals such as △contributing to environment-related SDGs, △enhancing science-based and policy-driven cooperation, △expanding mutual support for member states’ environmental management, △strengthening Northeast Asian and global partnerships, and △advancing capacity building and knowledge exchange. The Strategic Plan is of particular significance, as it presents NEASPEC’s direction through the 2030 SDG timeline, building on more than 30 years of cooperation.
The meeting contributed to establishing a clear forward-looking framework for environmental cooperation in Northeast Asia through the adoption of the 2026–2030 Strategic Plan, and provided a foundation for more practical collaboration across the five priority areas. Korea will continue to play a leading role within NEASPEC, pursue tangible progress in regional environmental cooperation, and work to extend this progress toward the achievement of global environmental goals.