A number of meetings have addressed issues related to the Mediterranean in the past month.

The Joint Egyptian-Dutch Water Conference titled “Towards the new Long Term Strategy for Water in the Mediterranean” convened in Cairo, Egypt, from 2-3 November 2009. Participants developed a declaration urging negotiators for the UNFCCC COP-15 to recognize that adapting to increasing climate variability and change through better water management and water services requires significant additional efforts within water management and the areas of spatial planning and energy management. The participants expressed their commitment to strengthen institutional cooperation at all levels among the climate and water communities, and commit themselves to develop appropriate mechanism and institutional arrangements in order to work more collectively to address the immense development challenges ahead.
Members of the Water Expert Group (WEG) of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), which is in charge of the preparation of the Strategy for Water in the Mediterranean (SWM), held their second meeting in Cairo, Egypt, on 4 November 2009, to review the first proposals of the Technical Drafting Group defined at their first meeting, which convened in Athens in September 2009. They adopted a timetable in order to have the SWM ready for the UfM Ministerial Conference on water planned on 12-14 April 2010, in Barcelona. Civil Society will be able to react on the draft text of the SWM that will be available on www.ufm-water.net at the end of February 2010. The WEG is expected to hold its next meeting in February 2010.
The 16th Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention convened from 3-5 November 2009, in Marrakesh, Morocco, during which UNEP/MAP and its Regional Activity Centres (RACs) presented the first State of the Environment and Development (SOED) report covering the Mediterranean region. The State of the Environment and Development in the Mediterranean 2009 is a pilot exercise, based on the currently available sources of information and tackling key environmental issues for the Mediterranean region, such as climate change impacts in the Mediterranean region, water scarcity, threats to biodiversity and pollution. The report covers the 21 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The preparation of the SOED 2009 was lead by the Plan Bleu, under the coordination of MAP Secretariat, and involved the joint effort of all MAP regional activities centres.
Links to further information
Towards the new Long Term Strategy for Water in the Mediterranean website
Union for the Mediterranean – Water website
Sixteenth Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Mediterranean Action Plan website