Synthesis: Coming Together to Create a Stronger Mediterranean Partnership

The Alliance for Mediterranean Culture and Nature continues to grow from strength to strength by drawing on our experiences as the M6 partnership, now harmonized as the AMNC, a new effective partnership for conserving the cultural landscapes of the Mediterranean.

This coming together was reflected beautifully in our long-awaited, in-person meet-up at the end of November. The AMNC partners gathered in the beautiful cultural landscapes of the Camargue in France, a biosphere reserve and natural park, home to a large diversity of animal and plant species. 

Hosted by local partner Tour Du Valat and facilitated by IUCN Med, we organized a three-day capacity building workshop for members of the Alliance who were interested in improving their understanding of climate change mitigation and adaptation. During interactive workshops, we learnt more about developing nature-based climate change action plans and establishing a baseline for monitoring climate change and biodiversity in our cultural landscapes. Partners also shared their experiences on this theme through presentations. 

Due to Covid-19, we haven’t been able to organize any in-person events as an Alliance so it was a great joy to catch up and engage with each other in real life after nearly two years.

“I truly enjoyed reconnecting with the partners and exchanging about our experiences since the beginning of Covid. I learned a lot about nature-based solutions, and more specifically how to measure and calculate the amount of carbon stored in the soil. I will be able to use the new knowledge I acquired during this event for our projects in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco.” 

– Rachid, AMNC member

“It is very hard to find time for study during our day to day, since we are always busy organizing activities and with deadlines. It is essential that workers from NGOs have this type of capacity building from time to time. Book a couple of days to dive deep into a certain topic and share it with peers from other partner organizations. A really good deal!”

– Jara, AMNC member

Offering such capacity building opportunities for AMNC partners is an important part of our work as it promotes dialogue, discussion and peer-to-peer learning between members.

After the workshops, we went on an exciting field trip to the estate of Petit Saint-Jean, an agri-environmental project managed by Tour Du Valat. Post this, we visited the Camargue natural reserve for some fun bird watching, during which we spotted a variety of migratory birds including pink flamingos. We always enjoy organizing meetings and workshops at partners’ project sites as it allows us to better understand partners’ work in practice and to build stronger connections.

On the final two days of our gathering, we held a Steering Committee Meeting which was partially online to include members who couldn’t join us in person. We shared updates from projects at all pilot sites across Lemnos, Lebanon, Morocco, Menorca, Portugal, Spain,  and Turkey. We discussed our work plan for 2022, our joint  strategies and upcoming collective efforts in scaling-up our common approach beyond 2022 , amongst other elements. We also collectively evaluated our progress against projects as part of the MAVA Foundation’s Overarching Programme on Mediterranean Cultural Landscapes.

We look forward to strengthening this partnership further and to our next gathering!