For a cleaner Mediterranean by the year 2020This initiative is funded by the European Commission through DG EuropeAid.
For a cleaner Mediterranean by the year 2020For a cleaner Mediterranean by the year 2020The First Meeting of the Working Group on Environment and Climate Change will take place on 14-15 March 2017 at the premises of the Secretariat of the UfM in Barcelona, Spain.
National representatives in charge of Environmental Policy from more than 20 Mediterranean countries joined participants from international financial institutions, regional organisations and other key stakeholders in adopting a strategic document outlining the key objectives over the next 5 years for the H2020 Initiative for a cleaner Mediterranean as regards investments in pollution reduction, review and monitoring, capacity building and research.
The 7th meeting of the Horizon 2020 Review and Monitoring (RM) Group was held back to back with the 1st ENI SEIS South Support Mechanism Steering Committee meeting on 13-14 December in Athens, Greece, bringing together representatives from Mediterranean countries,
The Final Report of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) entitled "Shaping the Future We Want" prominently refers to the Mediterranean Strategy on ESD as a success on a global scale! The Strategy was endorsed in May 2014 by the UfM Ministers in charge of Environment and Climate Change. The Report was formally presented by UNESCO's Director General in Nagoya during the Opening Ceremony of the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development.
The sixty high level delegates of the Ministerial Conference on the Action Plan on Education for Sustainable Development in the Mediterranean unanimously adopted the Nicosia Declaration and the Action Plan of the Mediterranean Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development, that was endorsed in Athens, by the Ministers of Environment and Climate Change of the Union for the Mediterranean in May 2014.
Industrial operations have produced many environmentally hazardous sites throughout the Mediterranean region, which pose substantial health and other risks to both humans and ecosystems, affecting all aspects of sustainable development. To address this reality the EU funded Mediterranean Environment Programme organized a sub-regional training course in Algiers (24-25 September, 2014) dedicated to the rehabilitation of soils from industrial pollution with emphasis on highly toxic pollutants such as PCBs, mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb).
The 6th Meeting of the Review and Monitoring Group was held on 16 June 2015 in Valleta, Malta. The meeting built on the strategic orientations provided by the UfM Ministerial Declaration, the conclusions of the mid-term review and the outcome of the H2020 Steering Committee held in December 2014, during which the H2020 work programme for the period 2015-2020 was adopted, including the tasks and objectives of the Review and Monitoring group.
Most countries in the region are moving from the use of dumps/uncontrolled landfills towards controlled sanitary landfills. Although this is a comprehensive and overarching approach, there is an urgent need to do more and better. Using the methodology of Integrated Sustainable Waste and Resources Management (SWRM) it should be possible to achieve relatively quickly (in 2025) a rate of composting / recycling between 20 and 50% with all the economic, environmental and social advantages that accompany such a change.
