PANACeA speaks at Marine Protected Areas Forum

The second Forum for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Mediterranean was the first occasion to present the PANACeA project to a Mediterranean targeted audience.

PANACeA is the MED horizontal project responsible for the communication and dissemination of the results of thematic projects on the Interreg Med environmental axis 3.2 on protected areas. The project was introduced during the session moderated by WWF Italy on the evaluation and equitable sharing of socio-economic benefits by PANACeA partners Plan Bleu, co-organisers of the Forum, and the CPMR-IMC secretariat. The key role of the regions, challenges, links and potentialities in the development, evaluation and management of marine protected areas were addressed during the session, with tailored factsheets about PANACeA, now available online, distributed to participants and highlighting the projects’ emerging community and tools.

Held every four years, the second MPA Forum took place from 28 November to 1 December 2016 in Tangier, Morocco. The MPA Forum offers a unique opportunity to bring together MPA managers, decision-makers, and socio-economic advisers and experts from the world of science, research and civil society, to discuss the challenges of the Mediterranean basin in relation to the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity. These objectives aim to protect 10% of the surface of the Mediterranean for 2020 through a network of Marine Protected Areas. The forum presented the main results of the status of MPAs in 2016. Progress has been made at the quantitative level since 2012, with all areas covering 7.14% of the Mediterranean and 90% of them in European waters. However, qualitative efforts are needed to ensure adequate management and appropriate regulation.

The Forum recommendations were presented in the Tangier Declaration.