Namibe (now Moçâmedes), Angola in August 2014. At the Conference, ministers and senior government officials representing the fisheries, environment, transport and mining sectors of Angola, Namibia and South Africa, adopted a five-year Strategic Action Programme (SAP). The SAP is a wide-ranging document that: identifies and analyses six transboundary challenges that threaten the environmental sustainability of the BCLME lists the policy actions required to address these challenges and organises them into eight themes broadly outlines the funding required to implement the policy actions. The SAP reflects the objectives, principles and functions that are set out in the Benguela Current Convention. It provides policy direction for the period 2015 to 2019. The content of the SAP is derived from the Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA), a scientific and technical assessment that identifies and ranks transboundary problems and proposes remedial actions. A first TDA was developed for the BCLME in 1999 and this document was updated in 2013, following a series of consultative workshops. The SAP is supplemented by an Implementation Plan, an operational document that details the activities required to implement the policy actions. The Implementation Plan provides a framework for the BCC to develop detailed scientific or management projects that help to meet its objectives. Regional and global importance The Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) extends from east of the Cape of Good Hope, northwards into Angolan waters and encompasses the full extent of Namibia's marine environment. Like the Humboldt, California and Canary current systems, the Benguela is a major coastal upwelling ecosystem and an important centre of marine biodiversity and marine food production. Distinctive bathymetry, hydrography, chemistry and trophodynamics combine to make the BCLME one of the most productive ocean areas in the world; mean annual primary productivity is 1.25 kilograms of carbon per square metre, per year – about six times higher than the North Sea ecosystem. High productivity occurs as a result of surface waters that are continually fertilized by the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water. This cold water moves from depths where there is limited light to the well-lit environment at the surface where conditions are ideal for the rapid growth and division of phytoplankton cells. These single-celled plants proliferate to form dense phytoplankton blooms. It is these episodic but frequent bursts of productivity by phytoplankton that make the BCLME a region of sustained high productivity all year round. The high productivity is, however, in contrast to