The Mediterranean Forum For Applied Ecosystem-Based Management (MED4EBM) initiative is a partenrship project funded by the ENI CBC MED Programme 2014-2020, under the Thematic Objective B.4 (Environmental protection, climate change adaptation and mitigation) and Thematic Priority B.4.4 (Incorporate the Ecosystem-Based management approach to ICZM into local development planning). MED4EBM duration is three years and its total budget is 3,310,237.60 Euro; the project partnership spans four countries, namely Italy, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia.
The Project aims at enhancing capacities of various stakeholders and institutional actors involved in the management of coastal and marine areas, and at establishing a cooperation and coordination platform for them to effectively implement ecosystem-based Integrated Coastal Zone Management (EB-ICZM). Governments and other ICZM stakeholders can use this platform to take informed decisions on planning and managing coastal resources and achieve effective coordination on the ground. In turn, this will help wide-spreading EBM in the Mediterranean consistently with the Barcelona Convention and its ICZM Protocol.
MED4EBM proposes the use of innovative tools to tackle the main issues which currently limit the widespread incorporation of EBM into ICZM processes (EB-ICZM). These are related to the difficulties that the decision-makers and the professional team involved still face because EB-ICZM require:
Intense and continuous efforts to coordinate management actions across a wide array of stakeholders (e.g. governmental agencies; international programs and projects; social and economic associations) and application sectors (e.g. fisheries, tourism, transport, biodiversity conservation);
Intensive work by the team of professionals implementing EB-ICZM, with particular reference to adjusting the available guidelines to the specificities of the relevant ecological and socio-economic systems, as well as in operationalising them for their effective application in area of interest;
Significant amount of data and large databases,
MED4EBM intends breaking the above-mentioned barriers using an innovative land and sea management package which makes EB-ICZM much easier for the professional team, the stakeholders and the decision-makers involved. This package has been developed by one of MED4EBM Partners and consists of a software application and a set of methodological tools, to plan, implement and monitor EBM through a participatory and evidence-based approach.
The said methods allow handling the EB-ICZM multi-stakeholders analytical processes through a straight-forward path, providing analytical methods based on deterministic rather than statistical ecological and socio-economic assessments. These methods help the planning team and relevant stakeholders to identify and quantitatively assesses the relationships between ecosystem components, functions and services, along with the associated human activities, toward the establishment of a multi-stakeholders ICZM scheme. The software package enables the analysis of spatial and tabular datasets, and the compilation of data-aware advanced reports, via a multi-windows interface which facilitates the browsing of large datasets through an ecosystem-based logical mapping framework.
MED4EBM will establish one Ecosystem-based ICZM Decision Support Systems (EB-ICZM-DSS) in each of the four project’s target areas in Italy, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. This by applying a methodological protocol which consists of five easy-to-apply sequential steps to handle the complex multi-stakeholders analytical processes that characterize EB-ICZM applications. The said EB-ICZM-DSSs will be then used to perform a systemic, indicator-based, and participatory analysis to develop an EB-ICZM Governance Protocol (EB-ICZM-GP) for each of the MED4EBM target areas.
Technical and methodological references on the above mentioned methods and tools, as well as on the activities to develop the said EB-ICZM-DSSs and EB-ICZM-GPs are illustrated in detail in the document titled MED4EBM: Technical and methodological references and operational framework for the execution of WP3 and WP4. This document is available for consultation on the MED4EBM website, under the section Library/Documents at the following link:
www.enicbcmed.eu/projects/med4ebm