Last March, a delegation from the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation attended high level meetings with Egyptian authorities aiming to boost the collaboration between IUCN and its Members in Egypt, discuss areas of interest and identify new IUCN-Med partners from governmental, NGOs and international organization based in Egypt. This IUCN-Med´s mission was organized in partnership with the Arab Office for Youth and Environment in Egypt.

During this mission, the IUCN-Med Director, Antonio Troya, had the opportunity to meet the Minister of State For Environmental Affairs, Dr. Khaled Fahmy, and to stress the valuable contribution of Egypt to foster the IUCN´s agenda and develop important initiatives in the country. Strengthening protected areas in Egypt through institutional reforms and private sector and civil society involvement was one of the main themes of common interest to work on in the coming months.

The IUCN-Med delegation also met the Deputy President of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Dr. Amr Z. Hamouda, in order to discuss a joint framework for collaboration between both institutions. The Academy has a longstanding partnership with IUCN since 1976 and plays an important role at national level as a think tank and as a platform for scientists and University experts.

Furthermore, for the first time a meeting between IUCN-Med and the League of Arab States took place and allowed both organizations to have an overview of their activities and discuss areas of common interest in the Mediterranean and North Africa. IUCN-Med also met representatives from the United Nations Development Programme in Egypt along with the Executive Director of the Centre for Environment and Development in the Arab countries and Europe (CEDARE), Dr. Nadia Makram Ebeid.

The IUCN-Med mission concluded with a meeting with the civil society organizations in Egypt at the premises of the Arab Office for Youth and Environment (AOYE). It was an opportunity to present IUCN, its main achievements at global and regional levels as well as the key thematic areas of the new Programme 2013-2016. The meeting was very fruitful and showed a great potential at technical and commitment levels. The main fields for common actions were species conservation, ecosystem restoration and ecotourism.

During these meetings IUCN-Med informed about the organization of the North Africa Congress due early 2014 and encouraged the participation and involvement of environmental organisations from Egypt.