Joint measures to preserve natural ecosystems from marine litter in the Mediterranean Protected Areas

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Many Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas (MPA) affirm that Marine Litter (ML) represents one of the major threats for the protection of biodiversity and marine ecosystems and confirmed the lack of knowledge and skills on how to effectively tackle this issue at their level. ML is a priority of the Euro-Mediterranean policies for sustainable development. Recently, many actions have been implemented but these policy commitments still need to be translated into the MPA context. ACT4LITTER will aim at reviewing the most promising proposed measures and select the ones that could be implemented in the MPA , considering particularly the ecosystem services. The selection of measures will result in the development of MPA-specific action plans whose implementation could be the object of a future project. In addition, those plans will be complemented, by a realistic and operational governance plan at transnational level. MPA stakeholders and key experts of ML value chain will be involved all through the process in order to validate the outputs together. The action plans will have a strong focus on preventive measures, using circular economy and sustainable consumption and production approaches. The issue of ML is global but MPAs are directly affected by its increasing amount, restraining highly the achievement of the conservation goals.

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