The Monaco Forum, which took place in November 2021, concluded the 2020-2021 Forum process, which began at the end of 2020 with online consultations with the wider MPA community, bringing together managers, policy-makers, scientists, economic players, regional and international organisations, NGOs and donors from all Mediterranean countries and beyond.
The participatory process started in 2020 during the Covid pandemic with the leadership of the Network of Marine Protected Areas Managers in the Mediterranean (MedPAN), the Specially Protected Areas Regional Activity Centre (SPA/ RAC) of the United Nations Environment Programme / Mediterranean Action Plan (UNEP/ MAP) – Barcelona Convention, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Mediterranean Programme.
A survey on limiting factors hindering the achievement of MPA targets was launched in October 2020, to which more than 360 responses were received. In November 2020, online working groups were convened to identify practical recommendations to overcome the limiting factors divided by thematic areas : Policy and Governance, Legislation and Enforcement, Management and Knowledge, Capacity and Awareness, and Sustainable Financing. These working groups included over 170 people from across the Mediterranean and beyond.
Questionnaires and virtual exchanges were used to take stock of the current state of MPAs and to share a vision of the challenges and priority actions to be taken in the Mediterranean in the coming years.
The post-2020 Roadmap
The post-2020 Mediterranean MPA Roadmap (and the Forum process in general) enables stakeholders at different levels to identify priority actions and coordination mechanisms to drive the implementation of international MPA objectives in the Mediterranean, and in particular supports the Barcelona Convention’s post-2020 regional strategy for MPAs and MCEAs adopted by the Barcelona Convention’s COP 22 in December 2021.
Noting the lack of progress made since the last roadmap and the difficulty in measuring that progress, a different approach will be taken with this Roadmap to ensure commitments are tracked periodically.
Thanks to this new platform, a mechanism for monitoring and evaluating implementation, with key indicators to be tracked is being developed.
The 2020/2021 Forum Programme and Proceedings
This Forum concludes the development process of the Post-2020 Mediterranean MPA Roadmap that began in October 2020 through an extensive multi-stakeholder online consultation. A significant part of the Forum’s programme is thus focused on the finalisation of the post-2020 MPA Roadmap and the development of an implementation framework aligned with the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework developed by the Convention on Biological Diversity and complementary to the Post-2020 Regional Strategy for MCPAs and OECMs in the Mediterranean developed in the framework of the Barcelona Convention.
Besides the Plenary sessions at the beginning and the end of the Forum, the programme included 30 Discussion sessions that contributed to the Roadmap recommendations, Thematic networking sessions gathered initiatives around a specific theme, Side events celebrated achievements or successful initiatives as well as Roadmap working sessions reflected the sessions exchanges in the Roadmap. More broadly, the Forum was an opportunity for networking and experience sharing within the MPA community.
The programme of the Forum was built around the 6 thematic areas of the Post-2020 Mediterranean MPA Roadmap objectives:
- Thematic area 1: Policy, Governance
- Thematic area 2: Legislation and Enforcement
- Thematic area 3: Management, Knowledge
- Thematic area 4: Capacity and Awareness
- Thematic area 5: Sustainable financing
- Thematic area 6: Cross-cutting topics
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The 2021 Photos and Videos
