Guiding Mediterranean MPAs through the climate change era: Building resilience and adaptation

The Mediterranean Sea climate will undergo rapid changes over the next decades. Direct evidence of climate change (CC) is already being observed at Mediterranean coast, including marine protected areas (MPAs). The need for building resilience in both social and ecological aspects of MPAs, through taking on adaptive management thus becomes an essential element for mitigating against and adjusting to the rapid changes to maintain and protect healthy ecosystems. However, CC is not explicit incorporated in most management plans and information to assist MPA decision making is both limited and fragmented.The goals of the MPA-Adapt are to develop collaborative and site-specific adaptation plans for the MPAs that enhance resilience to CC impacts. This will be achieved by building capacity for effective management, assessing risks- and exploring potential actions and priorities needed to ensure the adaptability and the resilience of biodiversity and the local communities. It also aims to incorporate CC vulnerability assessments and nature-based adaptation planning into their existing management framework, and provide guidance to MPA managers and local stakeholders to implement and test climate-change approaches. This project is a first of its kind for the marine and coastal Mediterranean environment and will also foster networks by improving the dialogue and coordination between MPA managers and scientists in order to create the first line of Mediterranean MPA sentinel sites.The 5 MPAs involved in MPA-Adapt project are located in the Western & Adriatic MED ecoregions (France, Italy and Croatia), thus they cover contrasted ecological and socio-economic settings. Recently, they’ve been mostly working on the preparation and implementation of their local vulnerability assessments for biodiversity and socio-economic activities. Monitoring activities were carried out to test the common indicators following the proposed methodologies (designed by the academic partners) and they involved consultations with other stakeholders to ensure the future implementation of these measures. From these results, the partnership will be able to build a Joint Governance Plan for MPAs face to CC. A merged re-edited version of the 5 monitoring protocols have has been published. The new functionalities of T-MEDNet web platform, including data exploration, are now used by the users-contributors. As regards the successful collaboration (in PortoFino and Isole Pelagie), PADI International & DAN Europe are willing to extend the collaboration framework beyond the project's duration to use citizen science and to extend the monitoring capacity & raise awareness on the effects of CC in the MED.As regards communication, the project partners have continued their work on CC materials (posters, leaflets, information PVC boards, cards & videos), awareness raising events and dissemination of information. This allowed once more to reach a wide array of stakeholders both on local and on regional level. The project was also presented overseas (Australia) as well as at several EU events (IOC-UNESCO and Ocean and Climate Conference, IMDIS, Pathways conference, GFCM Fish Forum, Italy Dive Fest). Two project microvideos were elaborated as well as two factsheets.The ongoing good collaboration with the Interreg Med and Biodiversity Community PANACeA was enhanced through the Capitalisation event in Brussels and Sharing Knowledge Regional Workshop in Marseille.PPs have also been active on social networks and in media in general, with project mentions in well-known TV shows (Linea Blu in Italy) and newspaper articles as well. Finally, MPA-ADAPT partners convoke on June 4th and 5th, in Barcelona, Capitalisation conference aiming at promoting a Policy dialogue among the main stakeholders:
1. MPA managers
2. Scientists
3. Policy makers
4. Local socio-economic Stakeholders
5. Citizen ScienceNumber of joint governance plans, Surface of habitats supported to attain a better conservation status, Number of protected areas engaged (through charters, protocols, MoU) in implementing management strategies, Expenditures declared to the EC for Axis 3,