SHAREMED International Workshop

Connecting marine research and boosting benefits to society

September 13 - September 14

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The SHAREMED project is actively assessing and addressing common and emerging challenges on trans-boundary marine environmental threats and pollution in the Mediterranean, and the shared, effective observing systems needed to monitor them and support informed decisions and actions.

This effort comprises a chain of project deliverables entailing new tools and methods as well as the sharing and capitalisation on knowhow and products for wider outreach and transnational impacts. These endeavours target also the non-EU countries in the region, embracing direct collaboration, technology transfer and training, and the involvement of experts.

The workshop is intentionally organised at the end of the project to showcase the achievements of SHAREMED in serving its goals to enhance impacts on collective research, improved networking, strengthened governance and a future vision at a Mediterranean scale.

A SHAREMED framework declaration, to be endorsed by key actors, stakeholders and responsible organisations at different institutional, geographical and sectoral levels in the region, will be presented and discussed for wider uptake and endorsement, possibly at the political level. The scope is to recommend governance structures and institutional arrangements towards enhanced coordination and cooperation in a Mediterranean context characterized by the presence not only of EU countries, but also of pre-accession countries and third countries on the Southern shores that operate under different institutional and regulatory contexts. This declaration provides some overarching guidelines and proposed actions towards the cross-sectoral and cross-border articulation of marine observation and surveillance systems. It aims at connecting marine research and observation endeavours across countries, to be shared by international players and national systems in the riparian countries, meeting the many challenges for sustainable development and climate change, serving a knowledge based society, and addressing the multiple scopes of monitoring, response, planning, surveillance and security on top of research. Highlights will be dedicated to transboundary pollution and marine hazards in the Mediterranean with the elaboration of comprehensive hazard and risk assessments, favouring science-based environmental monitoring and sustained observation efforts under joint transnational schemes to match the new order of doing things in a future Mediterranean Sea. Finally, serving the wider interlinked contexts of security and control, monitoring and sustainability, and economic benefits.

The goal is to propose:

• an organised sharing of efforts and responsibilities,
• more rapid, timely responses to sustainability issues and challenges, and
• the intelligent, equitable and calculated benefits that need to be more deeply ascertained.

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Main Target Audience: National and regional responsible entities, regulating and operational authorities, research and monitoring institutions, scientific community, environmental managers, civil society, planners and decision makers, governmental officers.

Participants from the non-EU Mediterranean states are principally invited to attend since the workshop will intrinsically address the Mediterranean partnership envisioning the concepts of wide and deep transnational connections for broad and impactful benefits to society everywhere and at all scales.

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