From Albania to Spain, practitioners, authorities and scientists mobilised by the GL4MMPAs project are co-developing practical guidance to strengthen the management of Marine Protected Areas in one of the world’s most pressured seas.
More than 70 experts from eight Mediterranean countries have taken part in a series of national discussions aimed at improving how Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are managed across the region. The meetings, organised under the Interreg Euro-MED Green List for Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (GreenList4MMPAs) project, focused on developing sound, practical guidance for the effective application of the IUCN Green List Standard version 1.1 in Mediterranean marine contexts.
Held during autumn 2025, six National Focus Group meetings brought together MPA managers, national and regional authorities, and marine conservation experts from Albania, Croatia (with Montenegro), France, Greece (with Cyprus), Italy and Spain. The discussions are feeding directly into the development of regional guidance to support fair and effective marine protection in the Mediterranean.
Why Mediterranean MPAs need tailored guidance
According to the latest Mediterranean MPA status assessment by MedPAN and UNEP/MAP-SPA/RAC, there are over 1,200 marine protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures across the Mediterranean Sea, covering around 9% of the basin under legal protection. Yet only a small fraction benefit from effective management, adequate enforcement or long-term financing. Pressures from overfishing, coastal development, tourism, pollution and climate change continue to undermine conservation efforts, making management effectiveness a central challenge for the region.
While the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas provides a globally recognised standard for good governance, sound design, effective management and positive conservation outcomes, marine sites face specific challenges that differ significantly from terrestrial protected areas. Adapting the Green List Standard to the Mediterranean marine context is therefore critical to ensure it becomes a usable, credible and impactful tool for MPAs.
Understanding how to apply the 50 Green List indicators in the Mediterranean
The GreenList4MMPAs project is developing guidance and explanatory notes for each of the 50 Green List indicators, tailored to the Mediterranean marine context. This work builds on an extensive review of over 1,700 scientific and technical documents, interviews with Mediterranean marine sites already on the Green List, and a regional survey completed by 45 MPA managers and practitioners from 10 Mediterranean countries.
The National Focus Group meetings provided a key moment to ground this work in real-life management experience. During each meeting, experts jointly reviewed draft guidance, tested its relevance against national realities, and proposed concrete improvements. Discussions focused particularly on indicators identified by practitioners as the most challenging or unclear, ensuring the final guidance is both practical and applicable on the ground.
“By bringing together expertise from across the Mediterranean basin, this process ensures that the guidance we are developing truly reflects the diversity of governance systems, ecological conditions and management capacities of Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas. Feedback gathered through these discussions will feed directly into guidelines for effective Mediterranean marine protected areas, which we expect to publish by March 2026”
These guidelines will support Mediterranean MPAs in assessing and improving their management effectiveness, helping identify what works, what needs strengthening and where additional support is required.
Insights from the development of the guidelines are being fed into the process to create the IUCN Green List Standard version 2.0, aiming to facilitate and promote the application of the standard in marine sites worldwide. Ultimately, through this, GreenList4MMPAs will contribute to a more effectively protected sea, in the Mediterranean and beyond, delivering benefits for both marine biodiversity and the millions of people who depend on it.
The Interreg Euro-MED GreenList4MMPAs is a project funded by the Interreg Euro-MED programme, which aims to promote effective and equitable management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Mediterranean Region, and brings together six partners from five different countries.
