Atlantic and Arctic sea basin lighthouse – Addressing climate change and human activities threats to marine biodiversity

Proposals under this topic are expected to show how their activities and results will achieve the Mission objective 1 - Protect and restore marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity, in line with the timeframe of the Mission phases, i.e.: by 2025 for the ‘development and piloting’ phase and 2030 for the ‘deployment and upscaling phase’.

Proposals will focus on developing and demonstrating ecosystem-based conservation measures and approaches for reducing cumulative pressure from human activities to address marine biodiversity loss at basin/regional level.

Proposals will contain a set of activities, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Sustainable fishery management and practices;
• Pollution reduction and sustainable shipping;
• Prevention and control of invasive species;
• Marine and nursery habitat preservation and protection;
• Establishment of marine reserves, impacts of climate change;
• Adaptive management approaches and nature-based measures;
• Quantifying the impact of climate change (acidification, sea-level rise, deoxygenation, ocean warmings, primary production, phytoplankton and zooplankton, etc.) on ocean and coastal ecosystems and biodiversity.

Proposals can include application of genomics methods for the characterization of the biodiversity status, as well as for the long-term biomonitoring of restorative interventions and ecosystem evolution.

Proposals must:

• Carry out demonstration activities in 3 different countries of the Atlantic and Arctic sea basin, involving and including in the consortium partners from these respective countries;
• Proposals should also identify 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.

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