1. Background

The meeting is one of MedWetCoast regional seminars organized in the context of the capacity building component in an effort to facilitate exchange of experience and expertise across the Mediterranean on wetland and coastal issues, thereby ’closing the Mediterranean circle’.

The MedWetCoast regional project, with pilot activities in 15 sites across 6 Mediterranean countries (Albania, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine Authority and Tunisia) works at three different levels: the local or site level with activities to identify and implement protection measures in the context of the sustainable development of the area - site diagnosis, site management plans, socio-economic and participatory activities with local stakeholders, and implementation of urgent measures, b) the national level with encouragement towards policy making and strategy setting (coastal zone management policy, national wetland strategy, national laws and regulations, intersectoral coordination) and c) the regional level with exchange of experience, regional training and technical guidance.

As the second regional seminar of MedWetCoast, this seminar aims at providing the participating target countries with the necessary elements to launch and/or strengthen a national policy making process to develop and, later, implement national wetlands policies. More specificially, the seminar’s objectives were to:
 present the guidelines of the Ramsar Convention for the preparation, development and implementation of national policies for wetlands (résolution VII.6);
 learn from national experiences of a number of countries, preferably Mediterranean countries, with the process of development of national policies and strategies for wetlands;
 consider national experiences of a number of countries, preferably Mediterranean countries, with the process of implementation of national policies/strategies for wetlands and their integration into the sectoral policies of the country;
 review the status of national wetlands policies in the MedWetCoast countries ; and
 in each of the MWC countries, lay the steps for initiating a process of developing and/or strengthening national wetlands policies and/or strategies.

Regional Meeting report of National strategies and policies for wetlands PDF - 220 kb