U@MareNostrum - Strengthening Public Participation for water protection and management

The pilot project entitled “U@MARENOSTRUM” aims to involve, thanks to ICT and GIS, citizens and local actors (association) from the Mediterranean coastal zones in decision-making processes for the adoption and implementation of water and marine environmental protection policies and legislations in the Mediterranean region in accordance with the EU environmental legislation. Public Participation GIS is defined as the use of geographic information systems to broaden public involvement in policymaking. Thus, the project will support the citizens and local actors to identify environmental problems that need to be solved immediately in order to result in positive development in the French Riviera, Valencia and Ionian Islands regions as well as providing a way to solve them.

The main project objectives are:

• Reconnect citizens with politics and policy making by strengthening and broadening citizens participation in decision making process
• Offer the citizens the opportunity to work together in order to try and influence decision-making on particular shared interests or concerns related to environmental issues
• Address a key issue at EU level and at national and regional level too, the environment
• Complement and advance the eParticipation activities already undertaken by the European Union in order to identify what the future orientation of eParticipation
• Provide both decision-makers and the public with clear and understandable information on the decision-making process for the environmental policy field
• Familiarize citizens with the decision making process, making easy to citizens to visualize and identify the stages of decision making process
• Enable people with the same interests to form groups which transverse geographic barriers, and help these groups to participate in decision-making on environmental issues in the Mediterranean region
• Address with the use of ICT multilingual and multicultural problems of people wanted to be involved in the decision making process