A pan-Mediterranean workshop on Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), organised by the Tour du Valat was held in Arles from 13 to 15 November 2012, as part of the PEGASO project (People for Ecosystem-based Governance in Assessing Sustainable Development of Ocean and Coast).
Bringing together some 35 participants (decision makers, local stakeholders, and scientists) from 10 Mediterranean countries, the aim of the workshop was to develop a detailed vision of the future of the coastal areas in the Mediterranean basin. To achieve this goal, the scenarios developed in the framework of the Plan Bleu were used to try to establish possible political responses for ICZM in function of the evolution of levels of development and Mediterranean environment protection in the coming decades.
Another workshop, concerning the work carried out on study sites in the French Department Bouches-du-Rhône and the Al Hoceima Bay in Morocco, took place on 11 February 2013 in Marseille. Participants included representatives of the Plan Bleu, IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea), the Tour du Valat, the Rhone-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency, and numerous managers of coastal sites in the Bouches-du-Rhône Department. Hosted in collaboration with University Mohammed V-Agdal Rabat, this workshop was the opportunity for the managers of the study sites to present the main tools developed in the framework of the PEGASO project: indicators, environmental territorial diagnosis, use of the Land and Ecosystem Accounts (LEAC) approach to environmental accounting, participative local-scale scenarios, together with the first results of their application. Another workshop, to be held before the end of 2013, will present the final results of the case studies carried out at these “collaborative application sites” (CASES).
The aim of the PEGASO project is to use an ecosystem approach to identify the tools and build the capacities required for the implementation of the ICZM Protocol, drawn up in the framework of the Barcelona Convention, and in force since 2011, bringing together scientists, decision makers and planners from around the Mediterranean basin (universities, research centres, etc.) together with the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. Initiated in February 2010, and set to continue until January 2014, the project is based around several study sites in Morocco, France, the Adriatic, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt, together with Black Sea sites in Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia. The Greater flamingo, the Camargue and the Tour du Valat honoured on Arte.
Contact : Lisa Ernoul, PEGASO Project Leader at the Tour du valat ([email protected] [1])