“The GEF Adriatic project has had a powerful demonstrative impact that will reverberate well beyond the Adriatic, particularly in promoting Marine Spatial Planning processes based on the Ecosystem Approach, Ensuring Good Environmental Status in the Mediterranean Sea and coasts, supporting the restoration of ecosystems and ensuring that everyone can benefit from their services fairly and sustainably is at the core of our long-standing partnership with the GEF”.
Tatjana Hema, Coordinator, UNEP/MAP-Barcelona Convention Secretariat
“Applying the ecosystem approach is not only a matter of a single country. Instead, it embeds the need for transboundary considerations and cooperation among different regions or states involved. The GEF Adriatic project is all about promoting the need for cooperation and joint efforts for the common marine resources.”
Anis Zarrouk, SPA/RAC
"GEF Adriatic has been an innovative and relevant opportunity for both Albania and Montenegro. We pushed the ecosystem approach for biodiversity to a next level by using not only what had been made so far to increase knowledge, assess, and protect the marine ecosystems, but also by defining the best processes to assess its status at a national level, including its pressures and the interlinkages with human activities, fully in line with the IMAP."
Marina Markovic, PAP/RAC
“The GEF Adriatic Project will make a major contribution to our conservation obligations under the Barcelona Convention and to fulfilling our EU candidate requirements.
By significantly increasing our national capacities for assessing, monitoring and managing marine resources, it allows Montenegro to begin its first ever large-scale MSP process.”
By significantly increasing our national capacities for assessing, monitoring and managing marine resources, it allows Montenegro to begin its first ever large-scale MSP process.”
Ivana Stojanovic, Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism
"Our marine environment is one of our most important national resources, but we need to take a lot more action to preserve it. The GEF project gives us an unmissable opportunity to start managing the Adriatic in the integrated way such an aim requires. We hope that the experience and data the project generates – particularly through ongoing marine surveys along with marine monitoring– will provide a firm foundation for future MSP in Albania and beyond."