The Protected Areas Programme of the IUCN Office for Mediterranean Cooperation has launched a process to further collaboration and understanding between the Mediterranean members of the World Commission for Protected Areas, organisations and experts involved in natural areas throughout the Basin. Each and every person together with the documents they have drawn up, or helped to draw up, provide benchmarks and a basis for the process led by this Centre.

Throughout all the different documents presented in this report, there are constant mentions of the Protected Areas Commission and their Mediterranean experts, the Parks for Life document or the protected areas strategy for North Africa and the Middle East.

We hope the various Mediterranean experiences are all duly reflected, be they government run or not, international, regional or local, and that managers, organisations directly involved in management and the private sector will also find scope and benchmarks for their own measures.

Our starting point was the Mediterranean Reality, based on the scattered networks of protected areas, combined with an idea: "perceive protected areas as an opportunity and not as a restraint on local development". In other words, we are dealing with conservation and development in all IUCN categories of Protected Areas, including those that are relevant in terms of their use, such as categories V and VI.

The programme's aims are based on renewing commitments and on forging alliances that will enable efforts to be pooled, through different forms of management and planning, as well as to devise strategies for political stakeholders and tools for managers. The added value generated by investment in protected areas in terms of tangible and intangible values - such as quality of life enhancement for the population, increase in biological diversity or water and air quality - must not be overlooked either.

In the light of the work conducted by over 300 experts, managers, directors and personnel linked to protected areas, we are now on the way to achieving a coherent, representative Mediterranean system adapted for the 21st century that includes models for alliances and exchange of information to bring about improvements in management and AP managers' capabilities.

The sections below provide the working agendas, information and documentation from the workshops, together with a participant list and presentations as well as documents of interest and workshops held prior to the Mediterranean Conference in Murcia.

FUTURE STEPS

The mid-term scenario for Mediterranean protected areas and their future depends on their capacity to adapt to change and the capacity for interaction between regions in the north, south and east of the basin.

It is a period that encompasses changes in natural and political processes, ranging from adaptation to climate change, the introduction of invasive species or the changes that will occur in actions to be implemented for the conservation and development of land and marine protected areas in line with international conventions and meetings (Barcelona convention, Johannesburg, Biodiversity, Desertification…)

The relationship between species and protected area conservation is linked to the dual conservation concept of species - space. Hence the reason for working towards a vision for the marine and land environment that enables science-based sustainable development plans to be set in place with appropriate social support

Training at all levels, as well as local stakeholder participation from an interdisciplinary perspective that bears in mind the Mediterranean idiosyncrasies, is a variable that must be included in all actions undertaken. The question of scale is a further component to be considered, as conservation and management are not the same on a local level as when seen from the Mediterranean regional standpoint.

Topics that should always be included in protected area management encompass both the population and its impact on issues such as the "coastalisation" imposed on the coastal strips, as well as the antagonism between "urban" and "rural".

There is also a need for increased participation and collaboration between administrations so as to encourage Mediterranean experiences along the lines of the pioneer example of Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Interest (SPAMI).

Work must be made on projects and programmes that can impact on the ecosystem vision and that link protected areas together through their multifunctionality, respecting cultural, historical and socio-economic issues for the local population. Our mission is to comply with the motto: "work with people and for people".

The private sector should also be engaged in the management and governance of protected areas while the positive impact on the conservation of sensitive land and marine areas brought about by the change in trends in two key sectors, namely tourism and fishing, should be kept in mind.

For these reasons, we, at the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Co-operation, would like to encourage everyone involved in the protected areas process to promote the achievements made at the Mediterranean Conference on Protected Areas held at Murcia and the World Parks Congress at Durban so as to overcome the boundaries of traditional conservation and accept the challenges posed by these events in building a Mediterranean vision for the 21st century.