Mediterranean pollution: reinforce the contrast against plastics and waste at sea

13 july

The INFO-RAC Center meets the Coordinator of the Mediterranean Action Plan and the RAC Directors

The Mediterranean protection from industrial pollution, the plastics and waste monitoring to improve the quality of the bathing waters of the Mare Nostrum: these are the objectives of the UNEP / MAP (Mediterranean Action Plan), of which INFO-RAC is part ( Regional Activity Center for Information and Communication), held in ISPRA.

The MAP was adopted in 1975 by 16 Mediterranean countries and the European Community, under the auspices of UNEP. The UNEP / MAP brings together the countries that deal with environmental protection in the Mediterranean and today, at the ISPRA headquarter was presented the state of progress of the information system managed by INFO / RAC was presented.

ISPRA Director General Alessandro Bratti said : "Today's meeting has helped to strengthen the activities of the INFO-RAC Center hosted by the Institute, which represents the bridge between the European Community countries and those that are the  out of the Mediterranean and therefore plays a important role for international cooperation  concerning marine environment protection".

This moment of comparison with the UNEP MAP Secretary General Gaetano Leone and other RAC Center Directors was also an opportunity to identify common lines for sharing and exchanging data and information, partly because ISPRA has the task of drafting the INFO-RAC communication.

"INFO / RAC plays a key role in completing the mandate of the Environment / MAP", said Coordinator Gaetano Leone, "with the responsibility to build an informative system useful both to the parties involved in fulfilling the obligations deriving from the Barcelona Convention, both to us of the Secretariat in order to carry out an evaluation of the Mediterranean state. This is the great challenge that awaits us in the next two years, but to complete it, in the face of a mandate that continues to grow because it increases the attention towards the seas at the international level, we would need to have  a greater number of resources"