At the heart of PEGASO is the shared ICZM Governance Platform, which has been designed to facilitate communication, exchange and networking among PEGASO partners, end users from the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and local stakeholders involved in the ten collaborative application sites (CASEs). It has mobilized around 200 scientists and 800 stakeholders in a novel way by encouraging active participation and sharing knowledge and a better understanding of the scientific and pragmatic rationale behind the PEGASO tools developed during the project.

One of the main outcomes of the PEGASO project is the Integrated Regional Assessment (IRA) report. Its main purpose is to provide a policy-oriented blueprint for guiding future scientific research, policy making and socio-economic activities related to the ICZM Protocol in the Mediterranean, which can also be applied to processes in Black Sea countries.

The partners' diversity in the PEGASO consortium allowed for an extensive survey to compile information from all the countries bordering the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and to explore new forms of transdisciplinary thinking and working required to face up the challenges of coastal sustainability.

The PEGASO partners produced a general compilation and comparison of sustainable development approaches. Subsequently, they highlighted the common sustainable development concepts and frameworks between several strategies, protocols, directives, etc. Particular attention was paid to build a common understanding of the scope and intention of the ICZM Protocol, and its relationship to other contemporary policy initiatives regarding the coastal, marine and maritime realms.

One of the main tasks of PEGASO's shared ICZM Platform was to carry out a benchmark assessment of the current state of ICZM in Mediterranean and Black Sea countries, as required by Article 16 of the ICZM Protocol for the Mediterranean. In September 2010, the Black Sea Commission Permanent Secretariat (BSC-PS) agreed to adopt this approach for the Black Sea basin. Stocktaking for ICZM was then carried out in a comparable way for both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea countries, with a review of current ICZM-related legislative, institutional, policy and financial frameworks.

Sharing results with stakeholders and end users at different spatial scales has been a major objective of the PEGASO project. The rationale behind the development of the PEGASO Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) was to construct the tool by drawing on existing SDIs developed by project participants (for instance Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee) and EnviroGRIDS) and to support the creation of new geonodes to expand online data sharing and allow access to coastal zone management indicators.

This connected infrastructure for sharing spatial data based on ICZM principles was developed in several stages. First, capacity-building activities were established to support the construction of a functional network of geonodes; then the existing geonodes were connected in and access was provided to data from core institutions such as theEuropean Environment Agency; and finally local/regional or national geonodes were developed jointly where requested by stakeholders.

Over the project's lifespan, the PEGASO consortium has fostered its internal capacity to ensure that team members can engage effectively with each other in this complex, multi- and trans-disciplinary project. The consortium has contributed and enhanced capacity in the end user and stakeholder communities through a capacity-building conceptual framework and training action plan. The implementation of this plan has shown every PEGASO partner and end user how tools and knowledge can help them directly in their work to implement ICZM.

A framework for multi-scale ecosystem accounting in the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins has been produced under the PEGASO project. This work consists of three parts, namely Land and Ecosystem Accounts (LEAC), Sea Ecosystem Accounts (SEAC), and the Western Mediterranean Impact Index on Ecosystems (WMIIE). For the first time, these three components have contributed towards a holistic view of the changes in the quality and quantity of stocks and flows in the coastal zone and the pressures that drive them, with full coverage of the two basins at different times for coast and catchments. They have also provided an initial basis for mapping ecosystems, habitats and species, identifying stressors and measuring their cumulative impacts on ecosystems.

Application of the ICZM principles requires the development of a set of indicators and a good understanding of the direct and indirect drivers of change. The PEGASO indicators were selected on the basis of a review of the previous ICZM indicator framework, the needs of the ICZM Protocol and its link to the ecosystem approach, the requirements of other relevant European policy frameworks (the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the Water Framework Directive and Natura 2000), and needs identified by the 10 pilot CASEs and the Integrated Regional Assessment.

Participation is more than just a tool: it is a fundamental pillar of Integrated Coastal Zone Management. Within PEGASO, participation has been a cross-cutting issue and the basis for the integration of the tools developed. One of PEGASO's objectives has been to test and validate the assessment tools at regional and local scales to understand both global and cumulative local trends, and how they interact together in specific coastal and marine regions.