During the days 28^th of November to 1^st of December took place the 2020 Forum of the Marine Protected Areas in Monaco, co-organised by the network of Marine Protected Areas managers in the Mediterranean (MedPan), UN Environment Programme, the Mediterranean Action Plan, the Regional Activity Center for Specially Protected Areas (SPA/RAC), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Prince Albert II Monaco Foundation.

MedCities and the project Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Community participated in different sessions, as well as developing and implementing the communications strategy during the forum.

The Secretary General of MedCities, Josep Canals, intervened in the session “The contribution of networks to establish permanent connections between MPA stakeholders at all levels”, where he talked about the importance of local authorities to contribute for the establishment of permanent connections between the MPA stakeholders.

The Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Community project was also involved in all the communications tasks related to the promotion of the event in social media, as well as ensuring the participation of participants and experts in the MPA topic, as a way to open a discussion related to the process of the Post-2020 Mediterranean MPA Roadmap that began in October 2020, through an extensive multi-stakeholder online consultation.

A significant part of the Forum’s programme was focused on the development of an implementation framework aligned with the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework that is being developed by the Convention on Biological Diversity and complementary to the Post-2020 Regional Strategy for MCPAs and OECMs in the Mediterranean that is being developed in the framework of the Barcelona Convention.

The event counted with some plenary sessions at the beginning and at the end of the forum, as well as with 30 discussion sessions in which experts and professionals from the Marine Protected Areas from all Europe were invited to expose the results of their works and investigations.

Additionally to that, side events were celebrated to expose the achievements and successful initiatives as well as Roadmap sessions to discuss and exchange ideas related to the Roadmap.

The forum counted with 6 main thematic areas related to 6 different objectives: 1. Policy and Governance; 2. Legislation and Enforcement; 3. Management and Knowledge; 4. Capacity and Awareness; 5. Sustainable financing; 6. Cross-cutting topics.