StrategyMedFor was prominently featured at the Annual Medforval Meeting 2024, held from June 5-7 in Fontecchio, Italy. The event brought together 25 practitioners from national parks and natural reserves across 9 Mediterranean countries, providing a valuable platform for StrategyMedFor to showcase its progress.
Istituto OIKOS and CIHEAM-MAICh, key partners in the StrategyMedFor project, represented the initiative at the meeting. They delivered a presentation that provided an overview of StrategyMedFor’s goals and achievements to date. A particular focus was placed on the initial phase of the project that establishes a preliminary conceptual framework. This framework includes a critical set of criteria and indicators designed to improve management practices for Mediterranean forests.
Moreover, an overview of the project activities that directly involve the network such as the application of the indicators developed to each of the Medforval member sites to highlight impacts, fragmentation, connectivity & climate scenarios locally was provided.
STATEMENT FROM STRATEGYMEDFOR PARTNERSHIP
“StrategyMedFor will define a set of guidelines, criteria and indicators (C&I) tailored to the wider Mediterranean region with a focus on biodiversity loss and climate change. This process won’t be done in isolation. C&I will be defined through a consultation process, considering existing frameworks developed by key Mediterranean stakeholders, including the Medforval network, over the past years. This collaboration with Medforval is a strategic target for StrategyMedFor, contributing to reaching a wider impact at the Mediterranean scale.”
By fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange with key stakeholders like those assembled at Medforval, StrategyMedFor is building momentum towards its objective of developing a sustainable management strategy for Mediterranean forests. This strategy will be tailored to address the specific needs of various forest types and will account for foreseeable climate scenarios.
Created in 2015 by AIFM (International Association for Mediterranean Forests, Marseille) and funded by the MAVA Foundation, Medforval is a network bringing together forest landscape sites of high conservation value in the Mediterranean. Its members are a community of practitioners and scientists representing selected sites across the region, and contributing to the integrity and resilience of the Mediterranean forest landscapes.
About StrategyMedFor:
Despite the increase in Mediterranean forest cover in recent decades, these forests are not in good condition and require urgent action to increase their resilience to climate change and restore their biodiversity. According to recent studies, the Mediterranean basin is the second most affected region in the world by climate change. This will have an impact on the quality, integrity, distribution and cover of forest species, which will in turn impact the livelihoods of local communities. The StrategyMedFor project aims to develop a targeted Strategy for Sustainable Management of Mediterranean Forests for each forest type, adapted to foreseeable climate scenarios, thus contributing to their restoration and conservation. The project is scheduled to last for 2.5 years, from January 2024 to September 2026.
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Towards a Strategy for the Sustainable Management of Mediterranean Forests (StrategyMedFor)