The Ministry of Environment in Lebanon and IUCN with the support of other partners such as the Regional Activity Centre for Specially Protected Areas (RAC/SPA) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have brought forward a Marine Protected Areas Strategy in order to achieve a healthy, productive, and biologically diverse marine environment in Lebanese waters.

In Lebanon, there are two legally declared marine protected areas (MPA): the Palm Islands Nature reserve in North Lebanon and the Tyre Coast Nature Reserve in South Lebanon. The Ministry of Environment in Lebanon along with the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation are implementing a project "Supporting Management of Important Marine Habitats and Species in Lebanon (2010-2012)" to support the development of a network of MPAs and an associated monitoring programme to evaluate their management effectiveness. The Strategy is part of the results of this project which has been funded by the Organismo Autónomo Parques Nacionales (OAPN, Spain), the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the MAVA Foundation.

The Strategy was presented and handed to the Minister of Environment, Nazem El Khoury, by the IUCN Director General, Julia Marton-Lefèvre, and the director of the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation, Antonio Troya, in a meeting that took place at the end of November. The meeting was under the framework of the annual conference of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED).

The aim of this Strategy is to set up the national priority actions needed for the establishment of new marine protected areas in Lebanon and for the proper management of existing and new MPAs, as well as to define the type of interventions required at technical, research, regulatory, policy, institutional, financial, education, capacity building, communication and promotion levels.

The Mediterranean covers only 0.8% of the total surface of world oceans, but includes 7% of all known marine species. Marine protected areas have gained world recognitions as effective tools to protect the marine environment, and are much in favor in the Mediterranean where a strong effort has recently made to grant special protection to site perceived to contain the most valuable marine habitats and species. In the Mediterranean, marine protected areas are not distributed in an ecologically coherent and representative network, most of them (73,4%) are located along the northern shore.

The IUCN Mediterranean Marine Programme is involved in a number of pragmatic initiatives to preserve and restore the biological integrity, and to improve the governance of the Mediterranean Sea.

Photo: Hany ElShaer