Our world is facing unprecedented environmental challenges. Keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5°C implies a mandatory drop in CO2 emissions. Against this backdrop, the EC has issued the European Green Deal: an ambitious plan towards a fully sustainable economy, including aviation. With one million species endangered, biodiversity restoration is another key issue. Once aviation has recovered from the COVID pandemic effects, global air traffic as a major enabler of connectivity and economic growth will resume and keep increasing. This emphasizes the challenge of reducing the environmental impact of the air transportation sector as a whole. OLGA partners (airports, airline, handler, industry, research, SMEs) unite a wealth of expertise to contribute to solving this complex challenge: efficient and carbon neutral airport and airline operations, sustainable logistics, smart energy & mobility, intermodality for passengers and freight, emission/air quality assessments, green construction and circular end-of-life solutions. Sustainable Aviation Fuels supply chains will be integrated in conventional jet fuel infrastructure. Complementary types of low-emission mobilities, electric ground support equipment, hydrogen infrastructure and reduced carbon airside operations will be demonstrated. OLGA will achieve significant quantified advances already within the first three years, ready for exploitation by partners. This will lead to proven CO2 reduction, air quality improvement and biodiversity preservation with involvement of the entire sector's value chain. Sustainable impacts will be realised on societal, environmental and economic levels at local, national and EU scale. OLGA will have a duration of 60 months, requesting a 25 MEuros grant. OLGA's airports are uniquely positioned to showcase the environmental innovations, while the airports of Zagreb and Cluj will prove scalability and EU-wide applicability.

It is demonstrated that Nature Based Solutions (NBS) efficiently and effectively contribute to climate adaptation. However NBS need to be adapted locally and to be coherently chosen in order to assure sustainability and “no side effects”. To achieve this, ARCADIA will mobilise 8 European regions and communities – from Italy, Croatia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia - to accelerate NBS adoption and assist them in accessing up-to-date, evidence-based actionable knowledge, guidance, knowledge-intense tools and services, mutual learning and networking opportunities. The project will foster enabling conditions to accelerate regeneration using NBS, by analysing individual and socially determined perceptions of risks and solutions, and experimentally designing incentives and behavioural nudges fostering social acceptance and community actions. In ARCADIA, the definition of regional ambitions and of methodologies and approaches co-developed at consortium level, will be followed by the implementation of 15 co-innovation labs with the engagement of the interested communities and societal partners; the learning across policy areas will be exploited to up-scale and deploy at large scale the solutions in the regions, developing robust policy and economic tools (regulations, funding schemes, business models, investment tools). Strategic objectives of the proposal are: 1. Co-design regional strategies to accelerate transformative adaptation, building upon and mainstreaming innovative, actionable NBS with demonstrated feasibility, effectiveness and social value 2. Assist and empower communities, public administrations and businesses 3. Stimulate collaborative knowledge building and transfer, developing capacities and capabilities 4. Promote coherence and exploit synergies, value and production chains, and public and private spheres of business innovation 5. Advance EU research & innovation agenda on NBS and EU Mission Adaptation.