Completed workshop on transboundary governance – July 13/14

The Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Community (MBPC) organised a 2-day workshop, entitled “Managing Transboundary Priority Areas: Towards a governance mechanism on the conservation of the south Adriatic-Ionian marine ecosystem”, during the afternoon of July 13, and the morning of July 14, 2021. The workshop was supported by the Marine Institute (Croatia), the European Topic Centre of the University of Malaga (Spain), the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe (CPMR) (France), the Plan Bleu for Mediterranean environment and development (France), the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism (Montenegro), with the communication support from MedCities (Spain) and Latte Creative (Italy).

The participation to the workshop was closed for 43 stakeholders. The workshop identified appropriate governance mechanisms to integrate ecosystem-based management, marine spatial planning and area-based conservation principles into a transboundary action plan for the south Adriatic-Ionian region. Options to embed this governance mechanism into the existing multilateral initiatives in the region (e.g., EUSAIR, the Adriatic Ionian Euroregion and the Adriatic and Ionian Initiative) were explored.

The next step, resulting from the workshop, is an early draft framework that identifies concrete and achievable activities, key enablers and most favourable connections with existing regional governance initiatives.