Total Foundation, France (http://foundation.total.com) – Overall funding 43.346 €
The Total Corporate Foundation was created in 1992 following the Rio Earth Summit. Originally focused on the environment and marine biodiversity, the Total Foundation is now active in four fields : marine biodiversity, culture/heritage, healthcare and community support. The Total Foundation's goal, which was reaffirmed in 2012, is to support the development of public interest actions that go beyond the industrial responsibility of its founder, TOTAL SA, by promoting the interconnection between expertise and innovation.
December, 1st 2015 - December, 31st 2017
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Human impacts represent serious threats to marine ecosystems worldwide. Marine Protected Areas (hereafter MPAs) are conservation and management tools aimed at: 1) reducing human impacts at sea, allowing the recovery from species to ecosystems; 2) balancing human activities with conservation; 3) promoting more sustainable local economies (e.g. sustainable and co-managed artisanal fishing).
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In the Mediterranean there are >150 MPAs (sensu stricto). MPAs have been demonstrated to have the potential to produce a number of ecological (e.g. populations of species to ecosystem-wide recovery) and socio-economic benefits (e.g. enhancing local fisheries). A significant percentage of the existing MPAs, however, are not well managed (and many are just ‘paper parks’). Ineffective MPAs, obviously, do not produce any benefit, while they represent non negligible societal costs.
- In order to improve the effectiveness of the existing and future Mediterranean MPAs, it is more and more pivotal to gain further political/social support towards MPAs.The objectives of the SCIMARMED project, therefore, are to: 1) collect, synthesize and analyze the existing and new field data concerning Mediterranean MPAs; 2) properly communicate and disseminate the scientific results about MPAs to MPA managers, policy makers, and key-informed stakeholders.