European Territorial Cooperation

MED Programme 2007-2013

Appetiser on cooperation results

Protecting the Mediterranean

Natural Patrimony

A very special heritage to be protected

The Mediterranean is the world’s largest inland sea. The diversity of climates, water depths, salinity, and landforms has produced a significant variety of flora and fauna, both in the sea and on its shores. More than 400 species of fish are found in the sea, along with shellfish, corals, sponges, and seaweeds. It is also the basin for most of the important rivers in the area and it is sub-divided in a number of smaller seas, gulfs and straits. These features contribute also to amplify the impacts of pollution, most of which coming from municipal and industrial wastes on the European shore. The problem is intensified by rapid industrialisation and by increased use of the sea for the transport of petroleum and petroleum products. Pollutants have closed many beaches and hurt the tourist industry, which is economically important. The challenges of climate change are particularly high in this area, subject to multiple pressures from anthropic activity:

deep and surface layers of Mediterranean waters are heating up;

rarefaction of potable and fresh water resources;

increase of forest fires; increase of parasitic diseases or

attacks;

regression and damage to soils, desertification and salinization;

development of emerging diseases, and progression of invasive species;

falls in agricultural productivity, or serious harvest loss

The awareness of the consequences of these changes has generated large scale movements and engagements from different authorities for the last decades. In particular, the Barcelona Convention and the Mediterranean Action Plan, as part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Regional Seas Programme, but also, amongst others, in the framework of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions’ activities: The global nature of environmental challenges demands for cooperation in sectors that don’t know territorial borders…

The MED cooperation projects’ contributions European Territorial Cooperation projects represent an opportunity for coordinated initiatives at a wider area that can be complementary to local and regional actions. Taking into consideration the natural specificities of the Mediterranean area and the transnational nature of environmental and risks phenomena, it is clear that the MED Programme can open interesting cooperation possibilities to work in a complementary way to interventions of different scales. The 2007-2013 period has clearly demonstrated the added value of joint actions in the environmental sector. The approved projects, far from being axed in pure scientific research or local investment, constituted the opportunity to create or strengthen networks, exchange and transfer of know-how, coupled with some strategic interventions on the territory.

What type of achievements?

“Definition of intervention tools” Constitution of transnational partnerships and collaborative networks as such are the most evident direct outcome of cooperation projects and lastly their main natural consequence. However, the programming period 2007-2013 focused on much more concrete results with long-term impacts. Projects approaches and their results became more concrete:

In this sense, the main results in this working field have been the definition of intervention tools such as action plans and managing models favouring the emergence of a certain green governance at local and regional level, as well as raising awareness among public and private actors in such fields as: waste and water management, energy, territorial management, protected areas, integrated coastal zone management, natural hazards (forest fire, climate change, coastal erosion).

“Contributions for protected areas’ planning and management”

In particular, a series of practical contributions for protected areas planning and management has been delivered. Take the examples of the

Self-assessment Guide and Roadmap for Protected Area Managers

Notes for the Roadmap to Develop Regional Approaches and Action Plans

both developed by the 2BParks project. These products identify the reference points to defining the planning tools and, on the other hand, provide a roadmap for protected area managers to develop specific approaches and actions.

Likewise, but oriented towards the marine areas, the MedPAN North project collected and made available an important set of information for general use on the innovative aspects of Maritime Protected Areas (MPA) management. The results were built on the experience of 12 key actors but are already reinforcing the capacities of the MedPAN association, gathering primarily MPAs managing institutions from the whole Mediterranean basin acting in more than 80 MPAs from 18 Mediterranean countries!

Besides thematic and local assessment documents, more global and strategic publications have been developed such as:

“Changes in legal frameworks and procedures”

Another level of intervention was the involvement of institutional and operational actors in the approved projects. This involvement has allowed at the same time to move a step forward and achieve interesting and promising changes in legal frameworks and procedures. Besides the translation to “internal” procedures of each of these partners, the demonstration of the effectiveness of some practices has resulted in including some of these aspects in more

permanent solutions. Such is the case of the AgroChePack: the partnership succeeded in the sensitisation, information and training of farmers changing the way plastic waste is faced in the agriculture sector. The path to a

transferable System for managing Agricultural Plastic Packaging Waste (APPW) was paved by increasing and/or improving the schemes of recovering, treating and recycling plastic packages of agricultural products. In fact, besides the interest demonstrated by different institutions in studying the possible adoption of such a solution at a wider scale (like the European Crop Protection Association) and its inclusion in several open consultation procedures (DG Environment, Greek Ministry of Agriculture and Food), the proposed policy of the AgroChePack scheme was actually integrated in the Cyprian National Action Plan for the use of pesticides, the National Scheme of Adivalor (France) and the Scheme of the Optimal Regional Ambit (ARO / ATO) territory (Italy).

Monitoring invasive species in Mediterranean MPAs

Guide for quick evaluation of management in Mediterranean MPAs

Underwater trail handbook

Environmental impact and socioeconomic features of recreational fishing

The MAREMED project evolved in a different direction promoting a series of updates and analysis of important fields related to the maritime environment (Integrated Coastal Management Zones, fisheries, governance, climate change adaptation in coastal areas) which led to the elaboration of

Thematic reports and the Signature of the Bologna Charter 2012

This is a European regions charter for the promotion of a common framework for strategic actions aimed at the protection and sustainable development of the Mediterranean coastal areas. Aimed at the strengthening of the role of the coastal administrations in the context of European policies and initiatives at the Mediterranean scale – coastal protection, integrated management, adaptation to climate change – the charter also promotes a macro-Project initiative for the European Structural Funds period 2014-2020 designed for a coherent Mediterranean macro-thematic and multi-sectorial strategy, open also to the coastal administrations of the South and East of the Mediterranean.

What other themes?

FORESTS were in focus of projects such as Cypfire FOR CLIMADAPT SylvaMED

PROTECT QUALIGOUV FORETMODELE

Hence, forest management plans, operational guides and action plans were developed.

The prevention of forest fires was tackled by the

projects Cypfire and PROTECT.

As an essential resource of biomass, forests were an

important emphasis within the strategic project

PROFORBIOMED on renewable energies and the

project WOODe3.

COASTS Apart from the projects described above, coastal

management was also in focus of other projects, such as COASTANCE, MEDLAB and MEDGOVERNANCE.

The project COASTANCE designed, among others, an Action Framework for the protection, management and adaptation of coastal areas based on sediment alimentation and losses reduction in critical coastal systems.

The capitalisation project COASTGAP has been created in

order to capitalise on best practices created within this field, to produce governance and adaption policies and design and launch a joint action plan on adaptations to climate change in the MED basin.

URBAN AREAS Policies for

sustainable urban models were especially in focus of

the CATMED project. It developed the so-called CATMED platform for Sustainable Urban Models based on a memorandum of understanding of cities in the MED region (Malaga Charta).

Also other projects created sustainable development solutions for cities: Projects on waste management, energy efficiency, sustainable transports etc. Their results and experiences were united to design the

capitalisation project URBANEMPATHY.

It aims at consolidating the CAT MED Platform bringing together projects, policy makers & stakeholders to share concrete results to improve the efficiency of sustainable urban policies in the Mediterranean ensuring their consideration in future programming periods.

PORTS have been an area of action for MED

projects in order to reduce emissions in this context, find energy efficient solutions and guarantee a better life quality in surrounding areas.

APICE BACKGROUNDS CLIMEPORT PORTA SEATOLAND TERCONMED DEVELOP-MED

have been working on solutions in this area. APICE, for example, developed local adaption plan based on visioning and construction of alternative models of port areas in harmony with the urban context, while CLIMEPORT developed a monitoring tool to measure emissions in ports.

WASTE Management Experiences in the field of waste management were not only integrated in the URBANEMPATHY project.

The capitalisation project ZEROWASTE PRO was created to capitalise and transfer experiences and concrete results of MED projects dealing with waste management. The MED projects WASMAN, ZEROWASTE, AGROCHEPACK (presented above) developed solutions in this area.

ZEROWASTEPRO is mainly focusing on waste minimisation by prevention, reuse and recycling. A range of tools and practices have been selected already to be disseminated and ultimately be used by the local authorities and other stakeholders in order to achieve sustainable waste management by applying low cost solutions.

WATER Management Water availability and security play an essential role, especially for the cooperation in Southern Europe. Thus, various MED projects developed management solutions of this valuable resource:

WATERLOSS was dealing with management of water losses in drinking water supply systems.

MEDIWAT developed innovative solutions for managing environmental issues related to water shortage and quality problems afflicting Mediterranean islands.

Also, sustainable management of water in rivers and

river basins were in focus of the FREE-MED and

WATERinCORE projects.

To be continued…

The themes presented through this ‘appetiser’ will be issue of future cooperation

projects. The MED Programme 2014-2020 will focus on four

priority axis, out of which two are of specific interest for the themes covered.

Priority Axis 3:

Protecting and promoting Mediterranean natural and cultural resources

ERDF budget: 76.269.659€

Public and private co-financing for projects

Specific Objective 3.1:

To enhance sustainable development policies for more efficient valorisation of natural resources and cultural heritage in coastal and adjacent maritime areas

Specific Objective 3.2:

To maintain biodiversity and natural ecosystems through strengthening the management and networking of protected areas

Priority Axis 4:

Enhancing Mediterranean Governance

ERDF budget: 17.945.801€

Specific Objective 4.1:

To support the process of strengthening and developing multilateral coordination frameworks in the Mediterranean for joint responses to common challenges

Up to now, over 800 results of

101 finalised projects to be found in

the

More information about finalised and ongoing projects of the MED Programme 2007-2013 and updates on the MED Programme 2014-2020 on:

www.programmemed.eu

Published in October 2014 by the Joint Technical Secretariat of the European Territorial Cooperation MED Programme, Region Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur