Project: Innovative Ecosystem-Based Governance Strategies for Resilient Coasts (INN-COASTS)
Financing institution: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spanish Government)
Duration of the project: 01/01/2013 – 31/12/2015
Project description: The INN-COASTS project proposes a very innovative ecosystem-based integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) conceptual framework and associated tools for decision making. It is analyzing the state and evolution of the Mediterranean Spanish coast, its ecosystems, urban settlements, protected and non protected areas, making assessments and providing guidance for coastal resilient planning and management, understood in this proposal as the capacity of being flexible adapting to social-environmental changes in a sustainable way.
Three Spanish coastal case studies have been chosen in order to carry out the project: 1) the South Metropolitan area of Barcelona (Llobregat Delta – Garraf coast) (Catalonia); 2) the Ebro Delta (Catalonia); and 3) the Eastern coast of Almería (Andalusia), to work in each of them together with managers and decision makers, in a participative governance, sharing concepts, visions, data and results and identifying drivers and potential responses in terms of ICZM, with the aim of bridging science and decision making.
The project proposes to build an inventory of the coastal and marine ecosystems in the pilot sites, with criteria to identify and mapping them through different methods and assess their state and trends, identifying degradation hotspots but also networks of healthy ecosystems that should be taken into account for improving the planning and management of the coast. Guidance for ecosystem-based management are being written having in mind the anthropic but also global (including climate) change pressures on these ecosystems and their future.
UAB role: The INTERFASE team from UAB is the lead partner and the main staff provider of the project and is coordinating Activity 1: Ecosystem-based approach guidance for the ICZM in Spanish Mediterranean coasts, Activity 2: Development of a coastal ecosystem accounting methodology / blue green inventory for the Mediterranean Spanish coasts, Activity 3: Resilient coasts at the face of climate change adaptation: new challenges for urban adaptive planning and governances, Activity 4: Sustainable tourism in coastal areas: state of the art and challenges, Activity 5: ICZM governance platform in coastal areas and Activity 6: Project coordination and dissemination.