The new Mediterranean 30x30 Progress Tracker turns marine protection data into a live, transparent scoreboard. The Spain pilot, developed with the MED30 coalition, is now online.

How much of the Mediterranean is actually protected? Today, around 8% of the sea is designated as protected, but less than 1% is strictly protected — and many designated areas still lack management plans, enforcement, or both. With only four years left to meet the global commitment of protecting 30% of the sea by 2030, closing the gap between designation and real protection has become the defining challenge of Mediterranean conservation.

To help meet that challenge, the Med Sea Alliance is partnering with SkyTruth, the environmental watchdog organization specialized in satellite and geospatial technology, to develop the Mediterranean 30x30 Progress Tracker: a real-time advocacy tool that monitors progress towards the 30x30 targets across the basin.

The first stop is Spain. Working with the MED30 coalition — Marilles Foundation, Ecologistas en Acción, ClientEarth, and Oceana — the Spain 30x30 Tracker is now live. When the coalition reviewed the existing global datasets for Spanish waters, they identified gaps in how marine protected areas (MPAs) were classified. By contributing verified national data, the pilot now shows precisely how much of Spanish waters is protected, how much is strictly protected, and which MPAs are backed by an active management plan.

A bridge between science and advocacy

The tracker builds on the authoritative scientific baselines maintained by MedPAN and SPA/RAC through MapaMed, as well as the Marine Protection Atlas and ProtectedSeas Navigator. Rather than replacing these datasets, it acts as a dynamic advocacy layer between their formal update cycles — allowing national coalitions to flag discrepancies, correct misclassified areas, and visualize progress as it happens.

Beyond monitoring, the tool is designed to move campaigns from critique to proposal. Its Conservation Builder feature lets coalitions draw and propose new protected areas, showing exactly how national protection percentages would change if their policy asks were adopted.

"A target without transparency is just a promise. This tracker lets anyone — from policymakers to citizens — see exactly where the Mediterranean stands on the road to 2030, in real time. It exposes the gap between paper parks and real protection, but it also gives us a way to recognize the governments that are genuinely leading. That's how we turn accountability into ambition," says Pablo Rodríguez Ros, 30x30 Program Lead at the Med Sea Alliance.

What's next

Over the coming months, the partnership will work with national campaign leads across the region to integrate their data into a Mediterranean-wide model, with a high-level regional launch planned for late 2026. The tracker is designed not only to hold governments accountable, but also to recognize and amplify strong progress — turning the race to 2030 into a race to the top.

Explore the Spain 30x30 Tracker: https://30x30.skytruth.org/es/progress-tracker

The Med Sea Alliance is a coalition of 24 NGOs working to restore the health of the Mediterranean Sea by ending destructive bottom trawling, tackling illegal fishing, and expanding effective marine protection.

SkyTruth uses satellite imagery and geospatial data to make environmental change visible and hold polluters and governments accountable.