Project description
Improving climate resilience in EU coastal regions
Climate change is impacting coastal regions all along the European coastline, which is home to over 40 % of the continent's population. Therefore, ecosystem restoration and initiatives to enhance climate resilience in these regions are a top priority. In this context, the EU-funded CLIMAREST project will develop, test and optimise a modular toolbox that integrates expert knowledge, scientific information, multilevel stakeholder and community involvement, ecosystem service improvement analysis, cost-benefit analysis, priority of actions, and custom-designed protocols for restoring and monitoring a wide range of diverse coastal habitats. The toolbox framework will be tested in five ecosystems across a latitudinal gradient of the Arctic-Atlantic basin. The tools will be further tested for upscaling in comparable ecosystems.
Objective
The CLIMAREST project - Coastal Climate Resilience and Marine Restoration Tools for the Arctic Atlantic basin - integrates multiple expertise into a holistic approach, to develop a toolbox designed to establish guidelines for ecosystem restoration and to enhance climate resilience in coastal communities. The concept is to develop, test and optimise a modular toolbox that integrates expert knowledge, scientific information, multilevel stakeholder and community involvement, ecosystem service improvement analysis, cost-benefit analysis, priority of actions, and custom designed protocols for restoring and monitoring multiple coastal habitats. The toolbox framework will have common and specific tools that will be tested, optimised and demonstrated in five different ecosystems, across a latitudinal gradient of the Arctic-Atlantic basin, ranging from the high-Arctic Svalbard (79° N) in the North to the Madeira archipelago (33° N) in the South. The variety of environmental conditions and restoration needs of the five demonstration sites will provide different restoration scenarios with particular specificities in terms of biodiversity, pressures and threats, ecosystems services and stakeholders. The diversity in restoration scenarios will create a unique opportunity to develop a modular toolbox, that integrates common tools with tools that are specific for each restoration scenario into a collective framework. Ecosystem-specific innovations in nature-based solutions for habitat restoration that improve local climate resilience will also be developed, tested, and integrated into a general toolbox framework, establishing guidelines and innovative workflows. The toolbox and tools developed in each demonstration site, for different restoration scenarios, will be made available and tested for replication and upscaling in comparable ecosystems and similar communities, with particular emphasis in promoting stakeholder involvement.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringecosystem-based managementecological restoration
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencessustainability sciences
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringecosystem-based managementclimate change adaptation
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
7052 Trondheim
Norway