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The five regions of the world with Mediterranean-type climates characterized by mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers are extraordinarily rich in biodiversity, covering only 2.25 percent of the earth’s land surface but, for example, containing 20 percent of its named vascular plant species. These regions, found in parts of Australia, Chile, and South Africa; in the California floristic province of the United States and Mexico; and in and around the Mediterranean Basin, face greater immediate threats per unit of area than any other species-rich regions on earth. Rampant urbanization is one of the main threats to biodiversity in Mediterranean-type ecosystems, and a major threat to the health and well-being of the people who live in them. The "Med-5" regions share many problems related to their climate, including sensitivity to climate change and desertification, air pollution, overdrawing of groundwater, degradation of fresh water resources, marine pollution from urban runoff, and catastrophic fires along the wildland-urban interface. Public policies and education in these places are often based on locations with very different climates and fail to take into account the limits of their natural systems. The importance of, and threats to, Mediterranean-type ecosystems are inadequately recognized by governments, intergovernmental organizations, and the conservation community. For these reasons, the IUCN WCPA Urban Specialist Group has made the five Mediterranean-type regions of the world a priority. It has also pioneered in calling attention to the plight of these regions within the international conservation community. Although the Urban Specialist Group will retain a special interest in these regions from the standpoint of cities and urbanization, it has encouraged the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management to create a thematic group on Mediterranean-type Ecosystems (see link at right). Click the links for details.
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This is an initiative of the Urban Specialist Group of the World Commission on Protected Areas of IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Advisory Group
The Advisory Group on Mediterranean-type Regions of the IUCN WCPA Urban Specialist Group is cochaired by Ted Trzyna, Chair of the specialist group, and Joseph T. Edmiston of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy a unit of the California Natural Resources Agency, USA.
Key documents:
The Malibu Declaration
This document, a result of an IUCN workshop held in Malibu, California, in March 2004 (see below) ,was endorsed later that year by the International Society of Mediterranean Ecologists, meeting in Rhodes, Greece; and noted in the final statement issued by the first meeting, in Naples, Italy, of IUCN Mediterranean-region member organizations.
The Malibu Declaration led to the adoption, by an unusual unanimous vote, of a Recommendation by the 3rd IUCN World Conservation Congress:
IUCN Recommendation on Mediterranean-type Ecosystems Español / Français: Use search function of www.iucn.org and insert WCC 3.102
Meetings:
Publications:
Background paper: Cities and Conservation in Mediterranean-type regions
[Includes case studies from several cities in Mediterranean-type regions]
Global Urbanization and Protected Areas [Includes case studies from the Californias (Mexico-USA) and the Cape region of South Africa]
Related IUCN activities:
IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, Thematic Group on Mediterranean-type Ecosystems
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