Supporting Policy Makers to Establish Measures to Maintain Good Environmental Status (GES) Across the Southern European Seas (SES), Malta

PERSEUS aims to translate the principles of ecosystem-based management to promote the formulation of effective and evidence-based policy leading to the attainment of GES in the Southern European Seas. PERSEUS does this by moulding the scientific data related to the MSFD Descriptors it has collected during its lifetime to a format which is understandable and useful to marine and maritime stakeholders. In particular, PERSEUS aspires to build bridges with the community of policy-makers by championing the adoption of an adaptive approach in policy-making, which can respond dynamically to new scientific evidence emerging from ongoing research. 

Within this framework, PERSEUS will hold an international stakeholder training course on the implementation of the MSFD through the application of novel tools in Malta, in October 2015. 

This event represents a truly unique opportunity to carry out a joint training exercise for policy-makers from both EU and non-EU countries. All the riparian countries of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins have been invited to attend this event.

The participants targeted are policy-makers having a scientific background and who are currently responsible for providing advice to their respective national administrations about the management of their marine resources.

Among the expected results of the workshop are the formulation of evidence-based and adaptive policies to address marine issues important for these stakeholders and the ‘putting into practice’ the same policies by generating scenarios through the application of the Adaptive Marine Policy (AMP) Toolbox and other tools developed within PERSEUS. The foresight generated through the novel PERSEUS tools can in turn allow the riparian countries of the Southern European Seas (SES) to formulate appropriate measures through which to achieve long-term Good Environmental Status (GES) of their waters.

The participants of the workshop will include 1-2 policy-makers having a scientific background and currently responsible to provide advice to their respective national administrations about the management of their marine resources.

All the Mediterranean and Black Sea riparian countries will be targeted, namely:
EU – Greece, Malta, Italy, Spain, France, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria
Non-EU – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Palestinian Territories, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia Hercegovina, Russia, Moldova

For non-EU countries, priority will be given to those attending the WP5 training seminars being held between April and October 2015 and to participants nominated by UNEP-MAP and the Black Sea Commission.