Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Marine SABRES (Marine Systems Approaches for Biodiversity Resilience and Ecosystem Sustainablity)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
Marine biodiversity loss is continuing to decline despite current conservation efforts. Reversing the decline in biodiversity requires rapid roll out of effective conservation measures that can also enable a sustainable and resilient blue economy. Social-ecological systems-thinking and Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) are globally recognized tools to enable balanced marine development and conservation. Marine SABRES is a four-year Horizon Europe-funded research project designed to enable marine and coastal managers to make sustainable decisions, empower citizens to engage with marine biodiversity conservation, promote sustainable development in coastal and marine sectors, and set European marine management on a course to reverse biodiversity decline. The main goal of Marine SABRES is to contribute to European-wide efforts for biodiversity conservation by integrating sustainable marine ecosystems and a resilient blue economy.
In pursuit of this aim, Marine SABRES brings a diverse group of stakeholders from government, policy, business, and coastal management together with marine scientists to co-design a simple Social-Ecological Systems analysis framework (the Simple SES). This framework will accelerate the uptake of EBM to strengthen interventions and measures for the protection and conservation of coastal and marine areas and their biodiversity and thus to safeguard the undisturbed provision of Ecosystem Services (ES). Marine SABRES is comprised of an interdisciplinary consortium including world leaders in the field of EBM and marine Social-Ecological Systems distributed across Europe and focusing demonstration of practical management efforts in three Demonstration Areas (DAs) (Tuscan Archipelago, the Arctic North-East Atlantic and Macaronesia) before upscaling throughout Europe and beyond.
In pursuit of this aim, Marine SABRES brings a diverse group of stakeholders from government, policy, business, and coastal management together with marine scientists to co-design a simple Social-Ecological Systems analysis framework (the Simple SES). This framework will accelerate the uptake of EBM to strengthen interventions and measures for the protection and conservation of coastal and marine areas and their biodiversity and thus to safeguard the undisturbed provision of Ecosystem Services (ES). Marine SABRES is comprised of an interdisciplinary consortium including world leaders in the field of EBM and marine Social-Ecological Systems distributed across Europe and focusing demonstration of practical management efforts in three Demonstration Areas (DAs) (Tuscan Archipelago, the Arctic North-East Atlantic and Macaronesia) before upscaling throughout Europe and beyond.
During the first 18 months of the project, Work Package 2 undertook the first round of stakeholder consultations that took place in the three DAs and the results were processed, presented and shared with the consortium (D2.1) in order to direct and guide ongoing work in other Work Packages. Simultaneously, Work Package 3 undertook an extensive, systematic literature review to explore existing Social-Ecological System (SES) frameworks (D3.1) with the aim of identifying and recommending an approach for the Marine SABRES project to create the Simple SES. Following this process, a comprehensive Simple SES Guidance Document (D3.2) was produced that aims to create a workbook that includes step by step guidance with examples, to be employed by the participant the project responsible for applying and testing the Simple SES in the DAs. A set of briefing papers was also produced, each addressing a key theme relevant to the Simple SES's conceptual characteristics and operational functions.
There is ongoing work for WP4 that is related to the baseline assessment of each DA's marine social ecological system of focus, the application and testing of transformation pathways scenarios and the testing measures for governance solutions. Although the associated deliverable is not due until Month 19, the work is almost complete and represents a large amount of effort during the first Reporting Period. Another task that was completed and will feed further into upcoming WP4 and WP5 objectives is task 5.1 of WP5, that is the identification of transformation needs (for consequent development and testing of possible pathways to transformation) in each DA, based on global SSP/RCP scenarios regionalized at demonstration area level using stakeholders worldviews.
There is ongoing work for WP4 that is related to the baseline assessment of each DA's marine social ecological system of focus, the application and testing of transformation pathways scenarios and the testing measures for governance solutions. Although the associated deliverable is not due until Month 19, the work is almost complete and represents a large amount of effort during the first Reporting Period. Another task that was completed and will feed further into upcoming WP4 and WP5 objectives is task 5.1 of WP5, that is the identification of transformation needs (for consequent development and testing of possible pathways to transformation) in each DA, based on global SSP/RCP scenarios regionalized at demonstration area level using stakeholders worldviews.
SES frameworks, are models used to analyze SES, by describing the key elements of the human and the natural subsystems and the interactions between these elements. As such, the Marine Sabres Simple SES, tested in quite simple contexts and eventually upscaled for appication into more complex systems, is aimed to be used by managers and decision makers to support EBM (which aims at balancing the human well-being and economic activity with environmental protection and conservation). The robust and evidence-based process developed within WP3 considers the system as a whole, and targeted conservation and protection measures can be directed at any element of the SES. The stakeholder engagement that has taken place within WP2 ensures that user needs and requirements are considered in the development of ALL aspects of the project, i.e. co-design, co-production and codelivery. The use of the Multi-Actor Approach to design tools specifically aimed for practical use by managers is one of the novel and key aspects and strengths of the project. Furthermore, the testing of the Simple SES in the DAs is ongoing within WP4 ensures that the Simple SES is implementable in a practical sense.