MED and Black Sea ICM 08

PAP/RAC, being co-organiser of the Second International Conference on the State of the art of ICM in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, played a very active role throughout this event. The conference was initiated by the Mediterranean Coastal Foundation of the MEDCOAST organisation and took place in Akyaka, Turkey, on 14-18 October 2008. The main objectives were to assess the progress in regions since 1996 when the first conference was organised and to discuss and agree upon the immediate needs for research, education and ICZM implementation.

Several papers were presented by PAP/RAC, including the keynote on the new ICZM Protocol for the Mediterranean, the Tunisian project on combating land degradation, an integrated planning and management approach for sustainable coastal tourism, and beach evaluation methods.

The third day of the conference two workshops were held and were entirely devoted to and led by PAP/RAC. These were related to legal and technical interpretation of the Mediterranean ICZM Protocol and its implementation, and the second one focused on networking, capacity building and awareness raising for ICZM. Three papers were presented to stimulate the discussion, namely: one on the implementation issues of the ICZM Protocol and efforts to mitigate them that focused on the regional scale; and two national-scale presentations, one on the implementation issues in Montenegro and the other on the steps towards implementation of the Protocol in Syria. The workshop was concluded with some concrete recommendations to be integrated into the overall conference report.