The IUCN Council has just validated the decision taken by its Bureau on 22 October 2015 to approve the admission of 16 new Members. Four of them belong to the Mediterranean region: the United Society for Developing Water Resources and Environment (Jordan), the Environmental Education Center of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (Palestine), Sociedad Española para la Defensa del Patrimonio Geológico y Minero (Spain) and Kaz Dağı ve Madra Dağı Belediyeler Birliği (Turkey).

The United Society for Developing Water Resources and Environment (USDWE), Jordan, is a non-profit-making NGO based in Amman, Jordan, founded in 2011. Its board consists of seven specialists in different aspects of engineering, development and management with experience of dealing with various national and international donors. It is supervised by the Ministry of Environment to achieve the following objectives:

• Develop studies and research and implement water and environment activities to raise the awareness of local communities;
• Develop sustainable development programmes in the field of water and environment and strengthen their implementation by means of appropriate information management systems.

The Environmental Education Center of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (EEC), Palestine, is working to address environmental issues faced by Palestine through educational offerings for the Centre's participants, including students, teachers, women, local graduate students and decision makers. Through these programmes, it hopes to reinvigorate public attitudes towards the environment, and provide capacity building and awareness training that will empower community members to work proactively towards eco-friendly lifestyle solutions.

Sociedad Española para la Defensa del Patrimonio Geológico y Minero (SEDPGYM), Spain, is an association of individuals and institutions concerned about the geological and mining heritage; it was founded in 1995.
Its purpose is to promote, disseminate and coordinate efforts to study, inventory, protect and restore the geological and metallurgical mining heritage.
It also organizes scientific meetings at national and international level, promotes partners' activities and organizes visits to museums, mines, facilities, sites and other places of Spanish heritage interest.

Kaz Dağı ve Madra Dağı Belediyeler Birliği, (KMBB), Turkey, was founded in 2007 and is a union of 25 municipalities and local governments located around Mount Ida.
The mission of the KMBB is to maintain the Mount's ecological balance and to protect its biodiversity. Moreover, the organization promotes cooperation among its member municipalities in order to protect the environment in a more efficient way.
The association of municipalities is environmentally friendly, democratic, participatory, transparent, accountable and efficient. It also provides quality services in an effort to protect Mount Ida's ecological integrity.

The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation warmly welcomes these four new Members in the Mediterranean region.

For further information, please contact: Arantxa Cendoya.

Photo: Mediterranean landscape - © IUCN-Med