GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should be large scale demonstration of hybrid nature-based solutions with built coastal and marine infrastructures to preserve ecosystems and/or support their restoration. The infrastructure purpose should be originally aiming at climate policy targets (e.g., hard and soft coastal or urban protection from climate change impacts – sea level rise, extreme events, erosion – , renewable energy farms or islands, maritime services and safety, etc.) and with the highest potential for being replicated, scaled-up and deployed. Proposals should also assess the putative impacts/secondary effects of these infrastructures, notably regarding cumulative impacts of the biodiversity drivers such as climate, land and sea-use change (infrastructures), invasive alien species, etc. 

Proposals looking at infrastructures serving several purposes (such as Low Trophic Aquaculture; educational and recreational purposes; support of fishery via creation of nursery habitats; bio filtration and bio depollution) are encouraged.

Proposals should look how nature benefits could be put at the centre of the infrastructures by addressing the selection or the development of materials for their construction, design, installation, and maintenance, to maximise the positive effects on natural processes and enable their preservation (if in good status) or restoration of the local marine ecosystems and their socio-ecological management.

Proposals should explore and improve co-creation approaches with the relevant actors (infrastructure owners, governance, civil society and end-users or beneficiaries) for the design, installation and management of these built infrastructures with nature centred design. Proposals should provide evidence and data of the multiple benefits and potential trade-offs of these hybrid solutions on short and long-term timescales and, in particular, for the purposes of marine biodiversity and ecosystems functions protection and restoration, but also for the blue economy and society as a whole.

For hybrid infrastructures aiming at protection against climate impacts, the proposals should provide evidence-based analysis of their efficiency compared to more usual infrastructure approaches, and to usual nature-based solutions, or as alternatives where “NBS alone” cannot be envisaged due to local environmental features.