Post by Dr Sašo Gorjanc

New paper out! 🚨 The Mediterranean Sea is among the most biodiverse ones on the planet and also one of the seas with the longest human uses. We set out to investigate how coherent the policies for conserving Mediterranean marine biodiversity are with the policies governing fisheries. Within the CrossGov project, with colleagues from ACTeon environment (Laura Bastide, Sarah Loudin, and Morgane R.) and CNR-ISMAR Institute of Marine Sciences (Ginevra Capurso, Emiliano Ramieri, and Andrea Barbanti), we analysed three Mediterranean case studies (French Mediterranean, North Adriatic, and entire Mediterranean) to delve into the complex interactions of policies. We find that at the strategic level the biodiversity and fisheries policies are coherent, both in the definition of policy objectives and timelines. However, that coherence unravels at lower and implementation levels. Fisheries policies remain more centralised, with clear enforcement and implementation pathways, defined at international levels, while also retaining more power and funding. Conversely, biodiversity policies have internationally defined goals, but their implementation patterns are defined at national and (sub)national levels with often limited mainstreaming into othe policies. Paper is available in Open Acces on the link below!