Funded with more than 10 million euros, involving 34 institutions from 17 countries
The UVigo Marine Research Centre is participating in a European megaproject that will try to advance the knowledge and prediction of the impacts of climate change on marine systems. It does so through the Future Oceans Lab group and under the direction of Professor Elena Ojea, who explains that it is a “cutting-edge and very ambitious project” whose main objective is “to provide regulators and decision-makers with the knowledge and tools necessary to address the loss of biodiversity in coastal and marine habitats threatened by climate change and other local and regional stressors”.
Coordinated from the Netherlands by Professor Myron Peck, from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, 34 institutions from 17 countries are participating in the project, which has a budget of over 10 million euros, of which 380,000 euros correspond to the CIM-UVigo. With a duration of four years, the launch meeting of this project will be held next May on the island of Texel, the Netherlands. It will be then when the methodology and strategies to tackle the different tasks of each of the working groups will begin to be defined.
It will provide authorities with up-to-date knowledge
Under the name ActNOW, Advancing understanding of Cumulative Impacts on European marine biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services for human wellbeing, this project will provide knowledge on how different environmental and human stressors impact biodiversity, which, in the opinion of the Future Oceans Lab members, will enable the design of feasible, science-based adaptation solutions to address biodiversity loss. “Traditionally, the analysis of cumulative risks of different factors has been relegated in science due to its complexity, but ActNOW wants to make up for this lack by making a collective effort,” explain the Vigo researchers involved in the project. In this line, they consider that the main strength of this consortium will be, precisely, that “it will provide decision-makers and authorities with updated knowledge and tools that allow them to predict the impact of multiple factors on coastal and marine biodiversity, and on ecosystem services for better management and impact assessment that will allow them to be more resilient to rapid climate and environmental changes”.
Vigo’s participation in the project
Vigo’s participation in the project stems from previous collaboration and participation in other projects and scientific activities such as the FutureMARES project, where researchers Juan Bueno and Elena Ojea lead a work package, as well as Ojea’s participation in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC. “These actions allowed us to expand and improve our knowledge and experience in the field of climate change risk assessment, giving greater visibility to our work, as well as giving us the opportunity to work with many of the researchers participating in this new initiative”, emphasises the researcher, while stressing that participating in a project of this magnitude with renowned international partners is a great opportunity, “we continue to work with experts from around the world, which allows us greater visibility and internationalisation of our group and our work”.
The work of the CIM-UVigo Future Oceans Lab research team will focus on working groups 4 and 5, aimed at analysing the accumulated risks to biodiversity and formulating solutions for decision-making based on current knowledge and future scenarios. Juan Bueno will lead and coordinate the tasks related to the design of a framework for biodiversity risk assessment in the face of different threats, which often act simultaneously and interactively, for example global warming and overfishing. The task led by Elena Ojea in working group 5 will synthesise the response options available to managers now and in the future to recover biodiversity loss, taking into account political and environmental scenarios. They will also be supported by Julia Ameneiro, who will contribute to the tasks and activities of working group 6 on dissemination and communication of the results of the project, and to the different actions carried out in the framework of this project.
Which way can the response options be directed?
From the point of view of these researchers, the response options currently available to managers to try to recover or, at least, maintain biodiversity are nature-based management measures, known as nature-based solutions. “This type of measures try to imitate the functioning of nature based on human actions, that is, they are actions that humans can take to return nature to a healthy state where biodiversity recovers its values prior to the impact of human activity,” explains Juan Bueno. These measures can range, he explains, from the simple delimitation of a protected natural area to the restoration or repopulation of species that are important for the functioning of the system, as well as the application of scientifically based extraction rules, “in the case of fishing, for example”.
These types of solutions also tend to take into account, as the Future Oceans Lab members emphasise, local and traditional knowledge of the social groups associated with the ecosystems being improved, so that they have a highly relevant social component. “Of course, there may be other types of measures based on technology or ex-situ conservation that can be very effective, and in specific situations also precise, but usually with higher costs,” adds Bueno.
The research activity of the CIM is supported by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union, through its co-financing under the Galicia ERDF Operational Programme 2014-2020.
Source: DUVI