COHENET – Achieving coherent networks of marine protected areas: analysis of the situation in the Mediterranean Sea

Institute for Water of the Repulic of Slovenia (IzVRS) is a regional partner in the COHENET project. The project is led by Belgian consultant ARCADIS, together with Italian Consorzio per il coordinamento delle richerche inerenti al sistema lagunare di Venezia – CORILA. Instituto Espanol de Oceanografia (Spain) and Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (Greece) are other two regional project partners.

The project objectives are to contribute to the Commission work on developing and testing a methodology to assess the efficiency and coherence of MPA networks and provide evaluation tools for highlighting the main data gaps and inconsistencies. Specific objectives of the study are to evaluate the state-of-play of Mediterranean marine protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, assess the coherence and efficiency of the Adriatic MPA network with regard to their capability to contribute to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive goals, and provide concrete recommendations to improve the effectiveness/consistency of the marine protected area network in the Adriatic Sea.

Project work is organised into two Tasks and networking activities with relevant stakeholders in the Mediterranean:

1. Task 1: Data collection on marine protected areas on the Mediterranean level, with a special focus on the Adriatic Sea
2. Task 2: Coherence analysis (Adriatic Sea case study)
3. Networking in the Mediterranean

COHENET project supports measures of the European COmmunity inf the field of marine environmental policy, according to Marine Strategy Framework Direktive (2008/56/EC), Habitats and Birds Directives (92/43/EEC and 2009/147/EC), Common Fisheries Policy (Regulation (EU) no. 1380/2013), as well as Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (2014/89/EU). Furthermore, the project also addresses the Aichi Target 11 of Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14.5.