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New list of all Mediterranean seabed habitats officially adopted by the Barcelona Convention thanks to the meeting organized at ISPRA

New list of all Mediterranean seabed habitats officially adopted by the Barcelona Convention thanks to the meeting organized at ISPRA

The Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against Pollution also know as “Barcellona convention” is the operative tool adopted by United Nations for Mediterranean(MAP). The Convention, signed in Barcellona the 16 febraury 1976 by sixteen Nations, entered in force since 1978. The main obligation for the Members are to implement the main actions to prevent, fight and eliminate the pollution for Meditteranean Sea and to protect the marine environment. The Barcelona Convention is implemented thanks to a series of technical protocols; the SPA / BIO Protocol refers to all activities on specially protected areas and biological diversity.

Last 22 and 23 January ISPRA hosted the meeting of experts, representatives of all the Mediterranean countries, for the finalization of the classification of marine benthonic habitats of the entire Mediterranean region and of the list of reference for marine habitats The official meeting it was organized by the Center for Regional Activities for the Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Importance (CAR /SPAMI) of Tunis, a structure of reference for the implementation of the SPA/BIO Protocol of the Barcelona Convention.

The meeting  was attended by the ISPRA DG, Alessandro Bratti, Tatjana Hema, Deputy Director of the Coordination Unit (named UNEM) based in Athens, Maria Carmela Giarratano, Head of the Directorate General for the Protection of Nature and the Sea of ​​the Italian Ministry of  Environment and Khalil Attia, Director of CAR/SPAMI of Tunis.

The two intense days of work, presided over by the Italian National Focal Point for the SPA / BIO protocol, Leonardo Tunesi, led to the definition and the subsequent adoption for the updated of the official list for benthic habitats of the Mediterranean and of the list of the reference ones. The result achieved is extremely important: the adoption of the two lists is an essential tool both for the identification of new marine protected areas of Mediterranean interest (SPAMI), and for the planning of biodiversity monitoring activities in the Mediterranean, so that these are really approached in a consistent and standardized way to scale the entire basin.