Background
Concerned by the degrading condition of the sea that unites them all in a natural bond, the Mediterranean rim countries, meeting in Barcelona in early 1975 under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme, signed a convention for the protection of this common sea and at the same time decided to launch and fund a Plan of Action meant to reinforce the implementation of this convention.
Right from the start, many felt that because about 80 per cent of the marine pollution originates from the land it was on land that they should seek out and fight the sources of pollution and that the Mediterranean Action Plan should be combined with a socio-economic component for preparing "integrated developmental plans and a more attentive management of the Sea's resources". Thanks are due in particular to Mostafa Tolba, then Executive Director of UNEP, and Serge Antoine, French representative to the Barcelona meeting, for having suggested a forward-looking thought-process for the entire Mediterranean Basin, to which the evocative name of Blue Plan was given.
With the decision in principle to undertake such work having been made by the UNEP's administrative council in April of 1975 on a proposal from France, a number of preparatory workshops were held in Nice, Geneva and Paris to define the project. This pioneering systemic and prospective study on the relationships between the environment and development concerning all the countries in the same region was launched at an intergovernmental meeting of the Mediterranean countries called by UNEP in February of 1977 in Split.
Initially the project was implemented by a non-governmental association under French law, called MEDEAS, at first located in Cannes, then Sophia-Antipolis, with the scientific management of the work being handled by a "Co-ordinating and Overview Group", named by the UNEP's Executive Director, with Mr. Ismaïl Sabri Abdallah as chairman and Mr. Michel Grenon as rapporteur. The Contracting Parties effectively launched the exercise in 1979 with MEDEAS' being named as the MAP's regional activities centre.
From 1980 to 1984 the Co-ordination and Overview Group, composed of seven members, conducted a first reconnaissance phase, relying particularly on twelve sectional studies, each drawn up by a tandem of experts, one from the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the other from the northern rim. A first summary of the information gathered was published in Arabic, English and French. But management problems appeared, obliging UNEP and the French authorities to disband MEDEAS late in 1984.
Because of his international experience and close relationship with UNEP, Mr. Michel Batisse, former assistant director-general for science at UNESCO, was invited to create and chair a new association in 1985 in order to ensure the project's management and to refocus its activities on the preparation and publication of a general report.
