COASTAL project presented at the NEO event in the Academy of Athens
On the 2sd of May, to celebrate its 10 years anniversary, the Navarino Environmental Observatory (NEO), one of Icre8 partners on the EU H2020 COASTAL project, organized a seminar at the prestigious Academy of Athens entitled “Challenges and Opportunities related to a new Climate Economy: Driving innovation for Sustainable Development”. This first class event welcomed among other prestigious guests, the president of Greece, Princess Victoria of Sweden and the Ambassador of Sweden in Greece.
The conference presented 3 different sessions related to Climate smart investment (session 1), integrate management of natural resources as a driver for sustainable development (session 2), and innovation, entrepreneurship and investments for sustainable development and climate transition in Greece (session 3). The second session was dedicated to the EU H2020 COASTAL project (https://h2020-coastal.eu/), of which Icre8 is a lead partner. The session introduced to the “Source to Sea concept” (introduction by Jakob Granit, Director General of the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management) which highlight the need to connect land management and sea management, to link physical planning on land and marine special planning, in order to reconnect ecosystem flows & services from the source (at the river basin scale) to the sea. The COASTAL project was then presented by representatives of 3 project’s partners (G. Destouni from Stockholm Unoiversity, A. Karageorgis from HCMR, G. Maneas from NEO-SU), the project follows the Source to Sea concept with the prime purpose of co-creating evidence-based business roadmaps and policy solutions for enhancing coastal-rural collaborations and synergies. The main legacy of the project will be an online collaborative land-sea integrative platform where local stakeholders from rural and coastal areas will have the opportunity the exchange knowledge via concrete examples and tools (https://coastal-xchange.eu/). COASTAL’s partners presented the work already accomplished with local stakeholders in Messinia (one of the 6 case study of the project), from which Icre8 was actively involved.