The regional Multi-Actor Labs in Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Romania and Greece addressed land-sea interactions in a collaboration of 29 coastal and rural partners representing the farming sector, offshore (blue) industry, the tourism sector, environmental agencies and water agencies, as well as knowledge partners. Co-creation sessions were successful in identifying and prioritizing problems and opportunities from the perspective of the stakeholder participants. During the final reporting period the activities shifted towards consolidating the land-sea models, the and formulation of consistent scenarios for drivers of change. While developing these models the regional Multi-Actor Labs managed to engage coastal and rural stakeholders, administrations and economic operators to develop synergistic policy guidelines and business road maps towards a sustainable future, tested for their robustness to cope with uncertain events and trends related to climate change, economic development, innovation and land-use change. This is a significant success with a high potential for exploitation. In less than 4.5 years the project resulted in a total of 33 research and policy-oriented deliverables, over 50 scientific publications, and a large number of qualitative and quantitative datasets which are made publicly available in an open data repository (
https://zenodo.org/communities/773782-coastal/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)). Outreach actions included policy briefs, practice abstracts, newsletters, social media activities, presentations through the project website, scientific conferences, online events and and other dissemination channels. The main outcomes of the project are:
- Improved, holistic understanding of the social-economic and environmental land-sea interactions, and their influence on the mid- and long-term impact on policy interventions and business decisions.
- The creation of a toolbox of qualitative and quantitative instruments for supporting sustainable regional development in coastal and rural regions, including tutorial examples and best practices.
- A broad set of representative and evidence-based business road maps and policy recommendations, which have been shock tested for exogenous and uncertain factors (climate change, economic crisis, land use change, …).
- Capacity building and training of local and regional networks of stakeholders, economic operators, researchers and policy representatives in holistic policy development.
COASTAL was concluded with a 3-day final event in Ostend, consisting of an exhibition/network event for the project partners, a scientific conference, and field trips. A general, very positive observation was the commitment expressed by all project partners to continue and apply the COASTAL approach in their work and activities, despite of the challenging trajectory followed to familiarize themselves with the systems thinking methodology. Phrased otherwise: the project has changed their way of thinking and will have an impact on their work. The final conference was also used to promote the new Knowledge Exchange Platform or KEP (
https://coastal-xchange.eu(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) showcase functionalities and clarify the collaboration model behind the KEP.
