The Center
TRSC signs MoU with Aqaba authorities
The Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) and the Transnational Red Sea Center (TRSC) at EPFL have signed on Monday 16, November 2025 in Aqaba a Memorandum of Understanding for the sake of climate change resistant coral reefs, a new milestone of the privileged relationship established between #Jordan and “Switzerland in this field.
The MoU was signed by HE Dr Nedal al-Ouran, ASEZA’s Commissioner for Environment and Public Safety, and Professor Anders Meibom, Director of the TRSC, under the patronage of HE “Shadi Ramzi” AbdelSalam Al-Majali, ASEZA’s Chief Commissioner, and HE Mrs Emilija Georgieva, Ambassador of Switzerland in Jordan, and in the presence of ASEZA’s Commissioner for Tourism H.E. Dr. Thabet Hassan Al Nabulsi, Naser Al-Zawaydeh, director of the Aqaba Marine Reserve (AMR) and local scientific partners of the TRSC.
The signature marks the culmination of a joint effort to develop and implement a groundbreaking approach to coral reef monitoring - Coral Reef Monitoring Toolbox (CRMT) -, which, in Jordan, brings together the AMR, the University of Jordan Aqaba branch, and the Ben Hayyan Laboratories. It paves the way for further scientific collaboration in favour of the conservation of Red Sea coral reefs, considered as the « Reefs of Hope » due to their exceptional resistance to global warming.
The CRMT is a set of scientific programs using cutting-edge technologies designed to revolutionise coral reefs conservation policies, not only in the Red Sea but on a global scale. Bringing together the expertise of TRSC’s key partners at Ecole polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL) and ETHZ, its sister school in Zurich, the CRMT is conceived as a simple, efficient, adaptative and scalable monitoring framework composed of different programmes, tailored to the local expertise to ensure long-term impact.
It aims at supporting local scientific and environmental practitioners to autonomously produce robust and comprehensive coral reef health data, readily usable by decision-makers to support more efficient science-based conservation policies.
This innovative and tailored approach to the local expertise to ensure long-term impact puts Jordan at the forefront of the coral reef monitoring strategies in the Red Sea, with Aqaba becoming the regional hub of an implementation underway in Djibouti, Sudan, Eritrea and soon Yemen with the support of the Swiss diplomacy.
