Bycatch, the unintentional capture of non-target marine animals during fishing, is considered one of the greatest threats to marine species globally. This threat is particularly significant for protected, endangered and threatened species (PETS), including marine mammals, seabirds, turtles and sensitive fish species, with their bycatch threatening marine ecosystem health. While bycatch of PETS is recognized as a significant issue, advances in fully understanding risks to PETS have been limited, due to current inability to effectively monitor wide ranging, highly mobile and cryptic species. There has been further lack in advancement in approaches to reduce such risks. These issues all hinder Member States ability to eliminate and significantly reduce bycatch. MarineBeacon will respond to these challenges, working across a regional seas scale to identifying where significant gaps in understanding lie, and adopt innovative approaches to produce the knowledge and tools to better understand bycatch risk and vulnerability. Next generation monitoring tools will be produced and developed to improve understanding of the distribution and abundance of PETS in addition to the levels in which they interact with fisheries. Cutting-edge mitigation tools and techniques will then be extensively tested across diverse fisheries and regions to ensure transferable outputs are generated to significantly mitigate against bycatch risk. MarineBeacon will facilitate the uptake and adoption of its targeted outputs by policy, management, and industry by adopting a stakeholder centered approach, engaging and collaborating with stakeholder throughout the project to producing best acceptable solutions. Importantly, MarineBeacon will ensure long-term applicability and impact of outputs beyond the lifetime of the project through the production of a suite of decision support tools to ensure all measures to better monitor PETS and mitigate against bycatch risk are effectively targeted.

TRANS-lighthouses aims to gather evidence on material and immaterial results of NBS in order to rethink and reframe the main elements that compose the complexity of creating social and ecologically just NBS. More than a driving process, the collaborative work on planning and making NBS functional might stimulate a more concerted response towards environmental and climate crises, increasing the commitment of different stakeholders and upscaling their own spheres of action. TRANS-lighthouses adopts a non-linear perspective and opens up space for the adoption of a fluid and organic position that is able to integrate the diversity of subjects, institutions, knowledge(s), practices and values. TRANS-lighthouses’ ambition is to become a European reference on socio-political challenges for supporting NBS projects and solutions. The socio-politics dimension will be part of the public agenda for NBS towards SYSTEMIC CHANGE. This ambition will be achieved by assessing the benefits and limitations of NBS co-creation that have already been implemented and designed, tested and disseminated economically and socially fairer guidelines for NBS implementation. For this purpose, the project will conduct a thorough assessment, grounded on a transdisciplinary approach and critical analysis. Constituting a well-oiled network of citizens, local governments, scientific institutions and civil society-based partners which acts across borders, disciplines and sectors, TRANS-lighthouses will lead research on activities aiming to implement socioeconomic and political changes capable of enabling pathways for a socially and ecologically just implementation of NBS. TRANS-lighthouses integrates a network of NBS lighthouses for urban, rural, coastal and forested areas in 10 EU countries and 6 non-EU.

The BLUE CONNECT project addresses the urgent need to protect and restore marine habitats and ecosystems and to reach ambitious EU and global protection and restoration targets by 2030. Together with Marine Protected Area (MPA) managers, authorities, industries, and local communities from 12 Demonstration sites and beyond, BLUE CONNECT is co-developing, promoting, and demonstrating a systematic approach to marine conservation planning and management. This collaborative effort will result in the creation of a powerful Blueprint, directly supporting 1) setting science-based conservation objectives, 2) co-defining conservation actions for effective MPA co-management, 3) ensuring conservation effectiveness and 4) demonstrating the high potential of these tools for replicability and broader use. This will be made possible by establishing a holistic modelling framework that integrates various elements of biodiversity, ecological functioning, ecosystem services, and connectivity, while also considering inputs from stakeholders and local communities regarding social, economic, and cultural aspects when defining MPAs and ecological corridors. The project will contribute to a more comprehensive, science-based and inclusive approach to designating new MPAs or expanding existing ones, transitioning to strict protection, restoring ecosystems, enhancing ecological connectivity, and facilitating MPA co-management. By fostering just and fair stakeholder cooperation and citizen science initiatives, BLUE CONNECT will build a greater feeling of co-ownership of protected and restored marine ecosystems and MPA networks and empower communities to play a crucial role in safeguarding our seas.

ROTATES aims to sustainably enhance agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services by introducing and promoting minor starchy root and tuber crops (MRT) sweet potato, yams, cassava and taro, considered minor crops and currently underutilized in Europe, in both conventional and organic farming systems. These crops have substantial growth potential in temperate regions to meet the increasing demand in Europe, which has tripled over the last decade. The inclusion of MRT crops will complement the cohort of minor crops introduced into European agrosystems by the previously funded projects. Employing a multidisciplinary and multi-actor approach, ROTATES will (i) identify levers for MRT crop adoption along the value chain, through a comprehensive diagnosis of constraints and opportunities for MRT crop adoption, agronomic practices to inform farm typology analysis, genetic material assessment, and disease pressure evaluation, (ii) deploy MRT crops by developing agroecological management practices, including crop rotation and intercropping, to leverage the benefits on provisioning and regulating ecosystem services, establishing breeding hubs to deliver varieties adapted to the agroecological systems, and creating a clean seed system relying on a policy framework for phytosanitary certification to support sustainable production and material exchange, (iii) unlock the value of MRT crops by establishing sustainable and innovative healthy and traditional food and feed transformation processes, integrating livestock to recycle unused plant by-products and provide crop amendments - gluten-low-to-free pasta, bread, and plant-based ice cream and feed for ruminants and monogastrics- (iv) promote adoption along the value chain, targeting primarily farmers and growers, through marketing avenues and capacity-building efforts. ROTATES will contribute to improving producers’ income, enhancing product value, increasing agrobiodiversity, and reducing Europe's import dependence.

The IN SITU project combines research and experimental actions to advance the innovation-related practices, capacities, and potential of CCIs based in non-urban areas of the EU, a constituency of the CCI sector that has grown in visibility and significance over the last decade in Europe and internationally but which is still vulnerable due to the lagging attention of research and policy to its needs, characteristics, and potentials. The project aims to advance understanding of the forms, processes, and governance of innovation involving cultural and creative industries (CCIs) located in non-urban areas of Europe and to advance the ability of non-urban CCIs to act as drivers of innovation, competitiveness, and sustainability for the locales in which they are located. IN SITU brings together leading approaches to investigating economic evolution and diversification, a challenge-oriented approach to processes of innovation, non-urban place-based planning and development, and creative industries entrepreneurship to investigate the situation of CCIs in non-urban areas. The project couples this with a pragmatic capacity-building programme to enable CCIs to address some of the key issues of their communities/region and of our time. The core defining aspect of IN SITU is the interlinking of research and practice through place-based IN SITU Labs, hubs for projects in 6 non-urban regions across Europe, located in Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Latvia, and Croatia. Involving both Europe-wide research and place-based experimentation, IN SITU will provide an in-depth knowledge of the direct and indirect effects, cross-sectoral connections and spillovers, innovative strategies and systems, and needs of CCI practitioners in non-urban areas. Complementary to this, the project will assess and advance the multi-level innovation and culture policy and planning frameworks that contextualize and can enable this work.