The Executive Secretary's Report of the 40th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM XL), Beijing, China, 23 May to 1 June 2017, presents a summary of items of interest to CCAMLR Members.

Cooperation between the Scientific Committee of CCAMLR (SC-CAMLR) and the Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) has been steadily increasing over the last few years to the mutual benefit of both.  In order to avoid duplicate reporting between the two committees, and following discussions between the Chairs of the CEP and SC- CAMLR, the report of the CEP meeting is presented to SC-CAMLR by the CEP Observer to SC-CAMLR and the report of the meeting of SC-CAMLR is presented to the CEP by the SC-CAMLR observer to the CEP.  An agreed standard reporting template, to be routinely followed by both committees, has also clarified and simplified the reciprocal reporting.  Accordingly, this report provides the CEP’s annual report to SC-CAMLR-XXXVI.