Project description
Innovative solutions to restore biodiversity in European seas
Human activities and climate change are causing ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. Previous approaches, which focused on sector-based management in isolation and single spatial scales, have failed to halt biodiversity loss. The EU-funded BioProtect project aims to develop innovative ecosystem-based solutions for protecting and restoring biodiversity in European seas. It will use the ABM-DSF framework to engage stakeholders, monitor biodiversity changes, map human pressures, prioritise areas for protection and restoration, and measure ecological and socio-economic impacts. The project will demonstrate these solutions in five sites ranging from the Arctic to the Atlantic. It will consider ‘what-if’ scenarios, including climate change, protection strategies, and their impacts. The consortium possesses expertise in both the Atlantic and Arctic basins.
Objective
BioProtect will provide innovative, replicable and scalable ecosystem-based solutions that will accelerate the protection and restoration of biodiversity in European seas, in line with the EU´s 2030 targets and the European Green Deal. Pressures from multiple human activities and climate change are driving ecosystems degradation and biodiversity loss, threatening goods and services that are essential for human life and society. BioProtect aims to reduce these pressures by implementing an innovative area-based management decision support framework (ABM-DSF). The framework will include methods and capacity building to engage local stakeholders, to monitor and forecast changes in marine biodiversity, to map human pressures, to prioritise areas for protection and restoration, and to measure ecological and socio-economic impacts of conservation actions. These will be demonstrated in five sites from the Arctic to the Azores in the Atlantic. In the past, non-systemic approaches, focused on siloed sector-based management and single-spatial scales have failed to halt the loss of biodiversity. BioProtect’s novel and flexible framework will integrate different spatial scales and data sources. It will incorporate perspectives and knowledge from a wide range of stakeholders, to support the implementation and exploitation of its solutions by relevant end-users. BioProtect will consider “what-if” scenarios, including climate change, protection and exploitation strategies, and evaluate their ecological and socio-economic impacts. The BioProtect’s consortium holds cross-cutting knowledge and expertise, with the capacity to build on existing research and innovation within the Atlantic and Arctic basins. BioProtect will deliver impact-driven solutions to address biodiversity loss and climate change, with the aim to reach relevant EU Biodiversity Strategy targets for 2030, including a substantial contribution to reaching the EU nature restoration targets.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
113 Reykjavik
Iceland