The Inception meeting of the GEF project “Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach in the Adriatic Sea through Marine Spatial Planning” (GEF Adriatic Project) was held at in Tirana, Albania, on 29 May 2018. The Project's First Steering Committee Meeting was held the following day.
The primary objective of the Inception meeting was to discuss and agree upon the implementation strategy of the GEF Adriatic project, which aims at restoring the ecological balance of the Adriatic Sea through the implementation of the Ecosystem Approach (EcAp) and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). Since the project will be implemented in Albania and Montenegro, the Albanian and Montenegrin representatives provided an overview of their current practices with respect to the protection and management of the marine environment, and contributed to the discussions on the steps to efficiently deliver the project outputs.
The Inception meeting is an important milestone in cooperation among all the Adriatic countries, since the results of the project will directly contribute to achieving the Good Environmental Status (GES) in the Adriatic sub-region, and indirectly to the development of a common sub-regional approach on MSP in the Adriatic.
