Mission Climate adaptation and Mission Ocean and waters - Joint demonstration for coastal resilience in the Arctic and Atlantic sea basin

Date de clôture : 27 sept. 2022  
APPEL À PROJET CLÔTURÉ

Projects results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Upscaling of innovative solutions building climate resilience for coastal areas, making communities climate-proof and weather-resilient, in particular by adapting to extreme weather events and sea level rise;
• Collaboration and twinning between most advanced and front-runners regions on climate adaptation and other regions vulnerable to similar climate impacts;
• Acceleration of synergetic transformation to climate neutrality and climate resilience in coastal areas, supporting the development of the blue and low carbon economy;
• Technological, logistical, social and economic innovation for the restoration of marine, coastal and river ecosystems;
• Basin-scale cooperation, including through transition arrangements that create socially and economically sustainable propositions for local stakeholders, including, where appropriate, for indigenous people;
• Contributing to the implementation of the European Green Deal, the EU Adaptation Strategy , the EU Biodiversity Strategy, as well as the Galway Statement, the Belém Statement, the OSPAR Convention in connection with the implementation of EU marine environment, biodiversity and Arctic policies, the EU Arctic Joint Communication, the Atlantic Action Plan 2.0 with the aim to work for the benefit of all communities of stakeholders around the Atlantic and the Arctic and the Arctic Action Plan enhancing collaborative efforts to address the challenges in the Arctic;
• Contribution to the Mission’s Digital Ocean and Water Knowledge system through marine observations and open data and knowledge sharing;
• Contributing to better informed citizens and decision makers, for a better governance and coastal resilience planning

This topic relates to the Adaptation to Climate Change Mission’s third objective, aiming to support at least 75 full scale deep demonstrations of climate resilience and to Mission Ocean, and waters’ objective 1 aiming at protection and restoration of marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. It also contributes to the objectives of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) - including in terms of Good Environmental Status and restoration of aquatic ecosystems - and the Marine Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD).

Proposals should demonstrate solutions to build resilience to climate change in coastal areas in the Atlantic and Arctic sea basin, through the deployment of nature-based solutions, including nature-based infrastructures. Thus, proposals under this joint Missions topic should identify and demonstrate solutions that contribute to the objectives of both Missions at once.

Proposals under this topic must deploy full-scale demonstrations of innovative solutions with concrete measurable impacts leading to a measurable increase of the resilience and adaptation capacity of the regions involved, whilst contributing to climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

Proposals should focus on demonstration activities for the restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems through nature-based solutions/infrastructures that boost coastal resilience, such as oyster reefs, kelp forests, seagrass, coastal wetlands and salt marshes. The proposals should also explore different pressures and climate change adaptation needs in a systemic way, such as the soil erosion and its impact on coastal areas resulting in marine ecosystem pressures. Combination of nature-based measures with hybrid solutions and relevant Blue-Green engineering may be considered, provided these combined solutions are sustainable and integrated in coastal resilience planning and decision-making processes and provide adequate social and environmental safeguards.

Citizen engagement is a key concept for the Missions. The proposals should involve local actors, communities and citizens in actively shaping solutions for marine ecosystem restoration and protection and holistic socio-ecological management of restored and valuable ecosystems, including where appropriate European volunteer/solidarity corps and citizens science activities in the restoration activities. As the regions and communities need to undergo significant transformation to become climate-proof, measures need to be co-owned and respond to local needs and shared sustainability visions. The involvement of local authorities and local communities, including indigenous peoples, is required in order to ensure that the solutions designed are best suited, co-created and with the necessary ownership. Activities should, therefore, promote the involvement of local communities in order to hear from them the impact of intended actions, and to co-create measures that meet the Missions’ aims while taking local communities’ needs and values on board.

Proposals may involve coastal communities particularly vulnerable to the risks of extreme weather events, sea level rise, permafrost and/or ice melting. Islands and the EU Outermost Regions urgently needing restoration measures to adapt to climate change thus ensuring their population safety and climate-proof and weather resilient infrastructure may be covered by proposals.

Proposals should:

• Carry out demonstration activities in 5 different regions belonging to the Atlantic and/or Arctic sea basin, involving and including in the consortium entities from these three countries;
• Involve at least 10 ‘associated regions^[1]’ as third parties to showcase the feasibility, replicability and scale up of the solutions developed. The consortium will proactively reach out to the “associated regions” to enable them to follow closely the project and its demonstration activities, proving knowledge transfer to them and with technical assistance to build capacity and to implement coastal resilience solutions in their territories;
• Identify further areas and locations where the solutions are replicable and draw up an action plan and roadmap to replicate and scale up the ecosystem and biodiversity restoration solutions and actions.

As a mechanism to provide knowledge transfer and technical assistance to the “associated regions”, the selected projects will be able to provide support to third parties in the form of grants. The maximum amount of the envisaged Financial Support to Third Parties is EUR 100,000 per third party for the entire duration of the action. Proposals should outline the selection process of the third parties to which financial support would be granted based on principles of transparency, objectivity and fairness.

Proposals should (when relevant) build upon existing knowledge and solutions and support the upscaling of successful pilots, including from beyond the EU, designed and developed in the frame of projects funded by current and previous European and national programmes, in particular the European Union framework programmes for Research and Innovation (such as Horizon 2020, and the All-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance^[2] ), as well as the LIFE programme, Erasmus+, the national and regional programmes in the Atlantic/Arctic basins, such as INTERREG^[3] and European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, as well as the activities of the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership and the Atlantic Action Plan 2.0.

In addition, the projects granted under this topic will be requested to contribute to the networking and coordination activities led by the soon to be established Mission Implementation Platform, amongst all the projects funded under the Horizon 2020^[4], the European Green Deal call and under Horizon Europe, when particularly relevant for climate adaptation knowledge and solutions. Applicants should acknowledge this request and already account for these obligations in their proposal, making adequate provisions in terms of resources and budget to engage and collaborate with the Adaptation to Climate Change Mission and with Mission Ocean and waters governance structures. Projects funded under this topic are strongly encouraged to participate in networking and joint activities also with other activities and projects within the Atlantic and/or Arctic basin on restoration of marine ecosystems and climate adaptation.

The projects funded under this topic will:

• build links with other Mission activities and other relevant activities within the basin to maximize synergies, as well as with the European Blue Parks, other Missions’ activities;
• include a mechanism and the resources to establish operational links with the Climate-ADAPT platform (run by the European Environment Agency (EEA) together with DG CLIMA) that will act as a central element for the monitoring, support and visualisation of the Adaptation to Climate Change Mission progress in European Regions. To this purpose, projects will feed their results to the Climate-ADAPT and EEA assessments;
• support the Ocean and Water Knowledge System, in particular by contributing to biodiversity monitoring, modelling and knowledge creation and data.

As appropriate, the projects should also link with other Missions relevant initiatives. These networking and joint activities could, for example, involve the participation in joint workshops, the exchange of knowledge, the development and adoption of best practices, or joint communication activities.

To this extent, proposals should provide for dedicated activities on knowledge exchange and networking and earmark appropriate resources.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 5 to 7 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Ocean sustainability and blue economy
Societal Engagement

[1]‘Associated regions’ are understood as areas with similar ecosystems (e.g. neighbouring regions and/or in a different sea basin) and/or less-developed regions, with the view to build capacity to implement the innovative solutions to restore ecosystems. The proposals should ensure that the associated regions are located in Member States/Associated countries other than those that are part of the project consortium. An “associated region” should benefit from the Financial Support to Third Parties provided under this topic only once.

[2]https://allatlanticocean.org/whoweare

[3] https://www.atlanticarea.eu/ and https://www.interreg-npa.eu/

[4]LC-CLA-13-2020 https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/H2020_LC-CLA-13-2020 and LC-CLA-2020 12a Advancing climate services | Programme | H2020 | CORDIS | European Commission (europa.eu)