2nd IUCN North Africa Conservation Forum concludes with renewed commitment to strengthen membership in the region

More than 70 people attended the 2nd IUCN North Africa Regional Conservation Forum held on 4-6 October in Cairo, Egypt, on the theme ‘Conserving Nature in North Africa: A common challenge for a prosperous future'. The Forum concluded with a renewed commitment to strengthen membership in the region and to improve IUCN Member involvement in the implementation of the IUCN Programme 2017-2020. Key environmental challenges, including biodiversity loss, vulnerable ecosystems, water-scarcity and climate change, and regional progress in the implementation of the IUCN Programme 2013-2016 were topics examined by IUCN Members during the Forum.

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VIDEO: The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation15th Anniversary

Brochure: Small scale fishery and marine environment conservation: suggestions for an alliance

Core support to the activities of the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation is provided by the
Junta de Andalucia, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment and AECID in Spain, and the MAVA Foundation.

Biodiversity conservation at the heart of Mediterranean press reporting

In December, 14 press agencies convened in Málaga with some of the region's foremost environmental organizations to find an answer to the challenges facing environmental reporting in the Mediterranean. The conclusions of these two days of debate are echoed in the Málaga Declaration.

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Strengthening governance and cooperation between Biosphere Reserves in the Mediterranean

On November 24th and 25th in Tunis (Tunisia), the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation (IUCN-Med),in collaboration with the Spanish Autonomous National Parks Organization (OAPN), held a workshop to encourage and strengthen the partnerships and learning opportunities for a better management and governance of Biosphere Reserves in the Mediterranean.

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MEET celebrates three years of ecotourism achievements in the Mediterranean

On 11 December the ‘Mediterranean Experience of Eco-Tourism' (MEET) team held the final public event in the three years of activities of the MEET project, which was co-funded by the EU's ENPI CBC (Cross-Border Cooperation) Med Programme. Two meetings - the MEET Final Conference and the Advisory Panel on Ecotourism (APE) workshop - were (...)

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38 projects ready to roll out in North Africa

Within the framework of the Small Initiatives Programme for Civil Society Organizations in North Africa (PPI-OSCAN), 38 projects are ready to start in Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. Most of the selected organizations work in the environmental and sustainable development fields. The projects cover a wide range of topics, such as beekeeping, ecotourism, aromatic plants, oases and environmental education.

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Freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas in North-Western Mediterranean

The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation held a workshop on Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in the North-Western Mediterranean sub-region. This workshop was organized with the IUCN Freshwater Biodiversity Unit (FBU), based in Cambridge (UK), and brought together about 20 freshwater biodiversity experts from European scientific institutions, and (...)

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IUCN welcomes 4 new Members in the Mediterranean region

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 (...)

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IUCN-Med and the GFCM-FAO meet in Málaga

The Executive Secretary of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM-FAO), Mr Abdellah Srour, and the Director of the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation, Mr Antonio Troya, held a meeting on October 30th, 2015 in the IUCN office of Malaga, to follow up the activities included in the Memorandum of Understanding between the two organisations, signed on May 19th, 2014.

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Regional workshop on habitat mapping in Important Plant Areas

The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation in collaboration with the Biosphere Reserve of Sierra de las Nieves in southern Spain organized a five-day regional workshop on habitat mapping in Important Plant Areas (IPAs). This workshop's main objective was to provide participants with the practical skills needed to map habitats in IPAs, through both computer sessions and training in the field.

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Monocotyledon plants and saproxylic beetles assessment workshops

The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation in collaboration with the IUCN Global Species Programme organized a five-day workshop to establish an IUCN Red List of Monocotyledon Plants for the Mediterranean region. This workshop, the first of three to be held in the framework of this initiative, was hosted by UMR AMAP (Botany and Modelling of Plant Architecture and Vegetation) and took place at the CIRAD in Montpellier.

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Events

Steering Committee meeting of the "Small-Scale Initiative Programme for Civil Society Organisations in North Africa" (PPI-OSCAN), 12 January 2016, Malaga (Spain)
Representatives from the French Global Environment Facility, the Ministry of Ecology, Energy and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France and the MAVA Foundation will be participating to this meeting.

Red List review workshop for the Eastern Mediterranean region, 1-5 February 2016, Athens (Greece)
The aim is to review and finalise the assessments and distribution maps of c.450 plants from Greece, Turkey, the Middle East and the larger eastern Mediterranean islands.

World Wetlands Day, 2 February "Wetlands for our future"

12th Meeting of the Mediterranean Wetlands Committee (MedWet/Com 12), 7 - 11 Feburary 2016, Paris (France)

World Wild Life Day, 3 March 2016

International Day of Forest (FAO), 21 March 2016

World Water Day, 22 March 2016

Events

In the press