Find the MPA community commitments

A commitment is a pledge from stakeholders to act and support the advancement of the Post-2020 Mediterranean MPA Roadmap through practical and concrete actions.

Commitments are voluntary. This means that there are no legal obligations and no limitations on the numbers and the type of commitments that can be made. 

So that progress towards commitments is monitored, information on the actual implementation of the commitments will be updated during a review process that is planned annually.

Voluntary commitments are frequently used to help advance global and regional initiatives.

A Call for Commitments does not mean that stakeholders are expected to identify new activities or to develop activities outside existing mandates. Through their ongoing or planned actions, many stakeholders are actually already contributing to advancing the Roadmap. This is what we want to promote and highlight in order to showcase that marine conservation and MPAs are everyone’s business and the Mediterranean marine conservation community of practice is diverse and active. 

The post- 2020 MPA roadmap encompasses six strategic objectives, each with a number of tailored recommendations and associated indicators. So that we can advance the Roadmap and monitor its progress, commitments should be aligned with the recommendations and indicators already identified in the online form .  

There is two main types of commitments: Direct  / Contributory

It is important to note, that for both DIRECT and CONTRIBUTORY Commitments:

• Commitments can be made at the regional, subregional, national or local levels of action.
• No commitment is too small or too big, it can range from committing to one workshop or an entire marine spatial plan for a country, or from one stakeholder to an entire network of stakeholders such as municipalities, tourism organisations.
• Commitments can be existing/ongoing actions reiterated in the form of a commitment to enable better monitoring or can be new or planned actions.
• One commitment can only correspond to one strategic objective, commitments corresponding to multiple strategic objectives need to be entered separately

And most importantly: All Commitments should be SMART.

Marine conservation and MPAs are everyone’s business, therefore all stakeholders are encouraged to make commitments towards the Roadmap’s recommendations and success indicators.

However not all recommendations and success indicators are suitable for all actors. Only commit to actions and outcomes that are within your control. For example, an NGO cannot make a direct commitment to establishing a nationally designated MPA- but could make contributory commitments by supporting the process.

A stakeholder can submit one or several commitments, but should keep in mind the feasibility of meeting commitments, as progress will be monitored and reported.

All Commitments should be aligned with the Roadmap’s strategic objectives, recommendations and success indicators.

 To align your commitment with the Roadmap, the following steps can be made:

STEP 1 – Planned Action:

→ Identify the action you wish to turn into a Commitment

STEP 2 – Alignment:

→ Select if you want to make a direct or a contributory commitment. Then identify their alignment with the Roadmap, i.e to which of the six strategic objectives does the action belong, within this objective, to which recommendation does it contribute, and with regard to the recommendation, which indicator of success does this action either directly meet or contribute to meeting. 

STEP 3 – Commitment:

→ Formulate planned action(s) into a SMART Commitment. 

STEP 4 – Submission:

→ Submit your commitment through the Roadmap Platform.

In order to maintain momentum, enhance engagement and encourage action, an annual call for commitments will be announced to the MPA community to contribute, and the commitment platform will remain open for a period of time (3-6 months a year) to allow for the addition of new commitments by stakeholders. Further, there will be an opportunity during the following period to report on the existing commitments’ progress, which will be a requirement for stakeholders that have already entered commitments previously. A dedicated message will be sent directly to the stakeholders inviting them to report on their progress. Progress will be reported directly into the platform and the webpage of their commitment(s) that will be open for editing.

On the basis of the information and data provided by stakeholders, overall progress, statistics and charts will be available on the platform showcasing Roadmap implementation progress.  

Each commitment whether direct or contributory will require certain key elements to be included in order to make them SMART, informative and streamlined across all actors.

For any questions, queries or concerns regarding making or submitting commitments you can use the contact webpage of the Roadmap platform.