After two years of work, the geoportal on natural resources and biodiversity in the Alboran Sea is now available online in three languages. The development of this geoportal was one of the activities carried out within the POCTEFEX-ALBORÁN project, which aimed to facilitate experience sharing among stakeholders so as to identify and harmonize the priorities for improving the governance of natural resources in the Alboran Sea.

The Alboran Sea Geoportal has been designed as a participatory platform for the collaborative sharing of georeferencing resources provided by environmental, scientific and academic institutions, both governmental and non-governmental.

The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation, as a project partner, coordinated the design and structure of the geoportal. For this purpose, IUCN-Med organized several meetings in 2013 that allowed various Spanish and Moroccan institutions to exchange georeferenced information on natural resources in the Alboran Sea.

The Environmental Information Network of Andalusia (REDIAM), the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA) and OCEANA, among other institutions that held relevant information, contributed to building this geoportal in this first phase.

The next stage in this initiative will be to build capacity on georeferenced information systems in Moroccan and Algerian institutions, with a view to generating more georeferenced data from both sides of the Alboran Sea.

The ALBORAN project is part of the Cross-Border Cooperation Programme Spain-External Borders (POCTEFEX), a European initiative to foster partnerships between Spain and Morocco, and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The POCTEFEX programme comes within the EU Neighbourhood policy for the Mediterranean basin.

Development of the geoportal also received support from the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Spain.

For further information please contact Lourdes Lázaro