Reducing Pollution from Harmful Chemicals and Wastes in Mediterranean Hot Spots and Measuring Progress to Impacts

To provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

For over 30 years and within a context of growing international action for the environment, the 21 states bordering on the Mediterranean and the European Union have together been developing an original mechanism for environmental regional cooperation within the framework of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Mediterranean Action Plan (UNEP/MAP). The Blue Plan is one of the stakeholders involved in this cooperation. One of the main tasks with which it is entrusted is to produce information and knowledge in order to alert decision-takers and other stakeholders to environmental risks and sustainable development issues in the Mediterranean, and to shape future scenarios to guide decision-taking processes.

In 1975, the Mediterranean States and the European Community approved the Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) as the institutional framework for cooperation in addressing common challenges of marine environmental degradation. The MAP also endorsed the preparation of a framework convention for the protection of the marine environment against pollution, as well as two related protocols that would provide a legal basis for action in protecting the Mediterranean marine environment against pollution.

The Regional Activity Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP/RAC) is a centre for international cooperation with Mediterranean countries on development and innovation in the production sector and civil society, based on more sustainable consumption and production models.