MedArtSal - Sustainable Management model for Mediterranean Artisanal Salinas

The European project MedArtSal, Sustainable Management Model for Mediterranean Artisanal Salinas officially starts in November 2019.The project is funded by the European Programme ENI CBC MED 2014-2020, with a total budget of € 3.2 million and an EU contribution of € 2.9 million (90%) and it will last 36 months.

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Background

Traditional salt pans and small salt pans are in continuous decline from the 50s of the twentieth century. As reported in many works, in the Mediterranean basin and the Black Sea region there are more than 170 saltworks (of which 90 still working) are recognizable today in 18 Mediterranean countries. The abandonment of saltworks is considered negative for local salt culture and sometimes for biodiversity and therefore accelerates further loss of cultural and natural heritage. Salinas across Mediterranean are today facing many pressures due to social values change and economic stresses; the market of their products is subject to strong competition from cheaper land-produced salt and the world trade. Faced with the need to be economically viable, salinas are confronted with the choice of closing, industrializing the production or changing the business orientation towards sustainable tourism and new artisanal products, already successfully experienced. A sustainable production of salt may deeply stimulate the development of other sectors (business, tourism, and environment), while increasing biodiversity.

Main objective

MedArtSal aims to promote the sustainable development of the Artisanal Salinas, providing concrete support on economic, environmental and governance issues. Addressing common challenges in four Mediterranean regions (Italy, Spain, Lebanon and Tunisia), will promote the development of a sustainable and adaptable management model fostering the territorial valorization of artisanal salinas.

MedArtSal model will represent an innovative solution and will provide innovative sustainable actions for salinas, providing a sound operational support and specific guidance on the best development strategy compared to the features and needs of the area. The model is made up of the combination of good practices (e.g. technologies, products), commerce (e.g. product selling, marketing), biodiversity and ecosystem service preservation, as well as other services (e.g. tourism).

As a direct result, the project aims to engage the cooperation between several private-public actors and communities, composed by saltworkers, SMEs, economic operators, policy makers, Universities, Research Centers, governmental bodies, and civil society in the Mediterranean.

Goals
• Identify those areas susceptible to economic and environmental challenges for the geographical distribution, socio-economic value and biodiversity significance.
• Define sustainable solutions, promoting management policies or procedures throughout the determination of critical elements for salinas development
• Develop and test tailored management solutions in several case studies and pilot actions
• Foster collaborations on B2C (resident and tourists) and B2B (GDO and HO.RE.CA) markets, promoting a SME cluster per participating country
• Build network among local producers and businesses to develop public-private cooperation

IUCN-Med's role

IUCN-Med will support the partnership in the evaluation of the enviornmental status of salinas in terms of biodiversity, production and socio-economics aspects, and the development of an integrated index taking into account biodiversity, socio-economics and innovation variables as to rank the Mediterranean salinas involved, including an assessment of ecosystem services provided by salinas. The team will also coordinate the subgrants for management improvement in artisanal salinas in Spain, and will be in charge of the communication workpackage for the dissemination of the results towards local authorities and stakeholders aiming at the development of artisanal salinas in the Mediterranean.

Besides, a tourism plan for salinas will be tested in La Esperanza (Cádiz) applying MEET model for sustainable tourism promoted by IUCN-Med across the Mediterranean region.

Final beneficiaries are: Artisanal salinas/Artisanal Salt producers/SMEs, National, Regional, local Institutions, Universities/Research centers, Chamber of Commerce, trade associations, and NGOs.

Partners

The project is led by CUEIM – University Consortium for Industrial and Managerial Economics (Italy) and the partners are: