AMAREMalta took hold of the presidency of the Council of the European Union at a time when environmental, economic and societal issues concerning the oceans were reaching a mature stage on the policy agenda in Europe. This process was triggered in 2007 by the “Blue Book” for an Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP) advocating a holistic approach to maritime issues across different policy areas. Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) comprising the harmonization of human activities in marine areas subsequently came into action as a powerful means to manage the intensive use of maritime space with minimal cumulative impacts and user conflicts. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) set the tangible goals to achieve Good Environmental Status for all EU marine waters by 2020. This has culminated to the active current engagement of the European Commission to improve international governance of the oceans and seas, and to promote sustainable Blue Growth.

This is the setting within which the MED Programme 2015 project AMAre (Actions for Marine Protected Areas) was conceived to aid Mediterranean countries in this process by specifically developing shared methodologies and geospatial tools for multiple stressors assessment, coordinated environmental monitoring, multi criteria analyses and stakeholders' engagements in the management of marine protected areas. Concrete pilot actions and coordinated strategies in selected Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), including the North East MPA in Malta, were placed to solve hot spots of conflicts affecting marine biodiversity and the services it provides. Transnational cooperation and regulations, development of coordinated best practices to deal with present and future drivers of changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services, coordinated monitoring, data access to share information and concrete stakeholder and users’ involvement are the expected results.

The approach went beyond existing practice across the basin, where, despite the presence of excellent examples of effective MPAs, the transition from single isolated MPAs to networks sharing a holistic vision of managing human uses was still far from being achieved. MPA managers, public institutions, and key stakeholders working within the MPAs benefit from the results of the project. The ultimate aim is to share strategies and recommendations at transnational level across the whole Mediterranean.

The first major outcome of this 3-year project was the setting up of a web GIS geodatabase shared at a transnational level and providing an exhaustive and integrated data platform in four key MPAs. This MPA geodata portal stores and manages data for monitoring, biodiversity, environmental data, data related to human activities, regulations and uses that potentially impact the environmental components. The spatial database provides a tool for managing and networking the protected areas, homogenizing and standardizing the data relevant to the monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

AMAre included twelve high profile partners from five Mediterranean countries – Italy, France, Greece, Malta and Spain and was led by the National Inter-University Consortium for Marine Sciences (CoNISMa, Italy). Besides the participation in all the other project activities, the Oceanography Malta Research Group (ex-Physical Oceanography Research Group) was responsible for coordinating Work Package 4. The objective of this work package was to use guidelines, methodologies and indicators for the assessment and management of present and future multiple stressors (e.g. marine litter). It also served to launch pilot activities in selected MPAs included in the project. Malta hosted a Technical Committee meeting in October 2017.

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