Marine and transitional ecosystems provide fundamental climate regulation, food provisioning and cultural services. FutureMARES provides socially and economically viable nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation to safeguard these ecosystems’ natural capital, biodiversity and services. The program advances understanding of the links between species and community traits, ecological functions and ecosystem services as impacted by CC by analysing the best available data from monitoring programs and conducting targeted experiments and beyond state-of-the-art modelling. Ensemble physical-biogeochemical projections will identify CC hotspots and refugia. Shifts in the distribution and productivity of keystone, structural and endangered species and the consequences for biodiversity will be projected within different CC-NBS scenarios to reveal potential ecological benefits, feedbacks and trade-offs. Novel, social-ecological vulnerability assessments will rank the severity of CC

Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (ES) are core to the EU Biodiversity (BD) Strategy. They are essential if we are to make informed decisions. Action 5 sets the requirement for an EU-wide knowledge base designed to be: a primary data source for developing Europe’s green infrastructure; resource to identify areas for ecosystem restoration; and, a baseline against which the goal of ‘no net loss of BD and ES’ can be evaluated. In response to these requirements, ESMERALDA aims to deliver a flexible methodology to provide the building blocks for pan-European and regional assessments. The work will ensure the timely delivery to EU member states in relation to Action 5 of the BD Strategy, supporting the needs of assessments in relation to the requirements for planning, agriculture, climate, water and nature policy. This methodology will build on existing ES projects and databases (e.g. MAES, OpenNESS, OPERAs, national studies), the Millennium Assessment (MA) and TEEB. ESMERALDA will identify relevant stakeholders and take stock of their requirements at EU, national and regional levels. The objective of ESMERALDA is to share experience through an active process of dialogue and knowledge co-creation that will enable participants to achieve the Action 5 aims. The mapping approach proposed will integrate biophysical, social and economic assessment techniques. Flexibility will be achieved by the creation of a tiered methodology that will encompass both simple (Tier 1) and more complex (Tier 3) approaches. The work will exploit expert- and land cover-based methods, existing ES indicator data and more complex ES models. As a result the outcomes will be applicable in different contexts. The strength of the ESMERALDA consortium lies in its ability to make solutions for mapping and assessment problems available to stakeholders from the start of the project, because our expertise allows us to build on existing research projects and data sharing systems.

REXUS ambitious goal is to bring transformative change in the way our societies approach the Water Food Energy Climate Nexus. The project argues that this is possible only through the activation of inclusive nexus partnerships, the Learning & Action Alliances (LAAs). The objective is for the pilot case Alliances in Europe and Latin America to develop shared visions and adaptive Nexus Management Strategies that will meet the Nexus sectoral objectives as well as broader criteria, such as habitat protection. In this context, LAAs will (a) co-produce new knowledge regarding Nexus interactions to inform the development of System Dynamics Models at suitable spatial and temporal scales and (b) explore multiple co-developed scenarios of demographic change, climate change, socio-environmental, economic incentivization and regulatory policies. Thus, SDM development is the means to (i) develop stakeholder platforms of trust, (ii) test the efficacy of integrated cross-sectoral policies, and (iii) build legitimacy for evidence-based decisions towards sustainable transitions. SDMs will inform climate risks assessments for combined-resource-management strategies by capturing the cascading effects among Nexus domains. The pilot cases will be the test-beds for the integration of methods, such as thematic biophysical modelling using Earth Observation, environmental cost valuations, natural capital and carbon accounting to explore case-specific challenges (including greening the CAP). In response to these challenges, Ecosystem-based Adaptation measures will be planned for these regional and transboundary systems. On a policy level, for the first time, REXUS will explore the opportunity to link Climate Adaptation (i.e. the Paris Agreement framework) to Nexus management as a means to push forward the Nexus agenda. The approaches above will support REXUS’ vision for Nexus systems that are managed within renewable natural resource constraints and in appreciation of climate feedbacks. The REXUS consortium is not meant to take side in the ongoing political discussions in the different pilot areas and the scope of the project activities is not intended to review and/or question any international or other form of agreement among the counties involved.

ODYSSEA will develop, operate and demonstrate an interoperable and cost-effective platform that fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin, addressing both the open sea and the coastal zone. The platform will collect its data from the many databases maintained by agencies, public authorities, and institutions of Mediterranean EU and non-EU countries, integrating existing earth observation facilities and networks in the Mediterranean Sea building on key initiatives such as Copernicus, GEOSS, GOOS, EMODNet, ESFRI, Lifewatch, Med-OBIS, GBIF, AquaMaps, Marine IBA e-atlas, MAPAMED and others with marine and maritime links. Through ODYSSEA’s end-user centred approach, in which the various groups of end-users and stakeholders, within and external to the Consortium, will be involved from Day 1 of the project in the design, development and operation of the platform, including identification of gaps in data collection and accessibility. High priority gaps will be filled through multiple approaches that include developing a network of coastal observatories, deploying novel in-situ sensors at sea (a.o. microplastic sensors), oceanographic modelling and integrating existing mobile apps for citizen scientist networks. Applying advanced algorithms to organise, homogenise and fuse the large quantities of data in common standard type and format as well as other types of formats, the ODYSSEA platform will provide both primary data and on-demand derived data services, including forecasts, from ALL Mediterranean countries through a SINGLE PUBLIC PORTAL to various end-user groups and stakeholders. End-user requirements will drive the creation of secondary data sets which the platform will provide as new and packaged services matching the specialised information needs of users. ODYSSEA will improve accessibility to existing data as well as increase the temporal and geographic coverage of observational data in the Mediterranean.