UfM commits itself to driving cooperation with regional partners on the Mediterranean green agenda

Barcelona, 3 December 2014 – Speaking at the Barcelona BioEconomy Forum, held at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site from 27-28 November, Deputy Secretary General Naser Tahboub stressed the commitment of the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean to fulfil its mandate in bringing together all relevant actors and to serve as a multi-stakeholders platform to boost the environmental agenda in the coming years.

Tahboub acknowledged the important milestones achieved by the UfM in 2014 through its commitment to cooperation between the Mediterranean countries on bio-economy related themes. In particular, he highlighted the UfM Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Climate Change, endorsed on 13 May by the 43 UfM countries, which covers “environment, climate change, and sustainable development”. He further underlined its relevance in relation to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris.

Specifically, the UfM is engaged in actively working with key stakeholders on the newly endorsed second phase of the Horizon 2020 Initiative to De-pollute the Mediterranean, ensuring pollution prevention through the adoption of sustainable consumption and production patterns. It also supports regional collaboration on key climate change challenges, tightly linking socio-economic development with environment conservation. The UfM labelled project Med ReSCP is the first tangible effort in this sense.

The Barcelona BioEconomy Forum is a policy-oriented but science-based solution-seeking platform, bringing together top-level company leaders with policy makers, scientists and other opinion leaders: blue-sky thinking firmly rooted in reality. Barcelona BioEco 2014 is the first event in a series of biennial global forums on sustainable economic development derived from a wide variety of forest-based renewable resources and ecosystem services. This year the focus is on the challenges of the Mediterranean area and Southern Hemisphere – with strong global connections.