Challenges to be tackled by ADRINET
Coastal zones are the most productive areas in the Programme Regions, offering a wide variety of valuable habitats and ecosystems services that have always attracted humans and human activities. But this intensive concentration of population and excessive exploitation of natural resources puts enormous pressure on our coastal ecosystems leading to biodiversity loss, habitats destruction, pollution, as well as conflicts between potential uses, and space congestion problems.
Because the well-being of populations and the economic viability of many businesses in coastal zones depend on the environmental status of these areas, it is essential to make use of long term management tools, such as integrated coastal management, to enhance the protection of coastal resources whilst increasing the efficiency of their uses. Integrated coastal management covers the full cycle of information collection, planning, decision-making, management and monitoring of implementation. It is important to involve all stakeholders across the different sectors to ensure broad support for the implementation of management strategies.
Coherent application with maritime spatial planning will improve the sea-land interface planning and management, such as for instance the protection of marine ecosystems. Marine litter and ghost-fishing, for instance, are some of the most relevant threats for the water landscape but the related information in our seas as well as in the Mediterranean, remains limited, inconsistent, and fragmented (Cozar et al.,2015; UNEP/MAP 2015).
Effective measures to tackle marine litter in the region are seriously hampered by the lack of reliable scientific data. Within this context the need for accurate, coherent, and comparable scientific data in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas is clear in order to set priorities for action and address marine litter effectively, thus ensuring the sustainable management and use of the marine and coastal environment of the Adriatic-Ionian macroregion.
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Roles and responsibilities
Cross-border regions share rather similar natural characteristics both in terms of coastal as well as maritime resources. This will make the cooperation smooth since project teams will need to apply methodology in similar circumstances.
Environmental Risk Management Plan (ERMP)
The lab analysis on the sea-water of the selected areas will be the basis of the Reports edited by the scientific Coordinator of LP together with scholars of PP 4 and PP5. This Report will be used for the elaboration of the Environmental Risk Management Plan which will be used for the pilot actions in WP T2 and WP T4.
Set up of 3 CRs
The Centres of References (CRs) are equipped public spaces (made available for free by the partners in each programme Country) where realizing training sessions for fishermen, Help-Desk services, events and informative campaigns about seabed and fishery management.
Fishermen Capacity Building Report
The Community Building consists in: A) Training sessions for min 40 fishermen in each CR on sustainable fishery and technological enhancement; B) 1 Help-Desk service to address issues and doubts in small group workshops/seminars or in 1-to-1mode. C) n.3 Site visits will be organised for 12 fishermen in the Programme’s Countries to let fishermen get in touch with their colleagues and communities in the other Countries and exchange experiences about fishing sector and sea-bed management.
Joint Coastal Management Tool
The tool starts from fishermen’s involvement and consists in A) 1 Survey to identify in GPS-mode fishing routes and places where ghost-nets are supposed to be abandoned. B) The surveys will result in 3 Community Maps. C) 1 Protocol on common strategies on joint coastal management and fishing-related issues will be signed by all partners. D) 1 Handbook on joint management of pollution-related related risks will be edited and published. The tool is inspired to C_FAR participative approach.
Ghost-nets removal and disposal through AGF actions + Scientific Monitoring Report
1 anti-ghost Fishing action (AGF) will be implemented in each selected area, conducted involving min. 40 fishermen and 20 fishing vessels per area (as the minimum crew of a vessel is 2 fishermen). Missions are made possible thanks to fishermen's involvement and training (WP T1 and T2). The ghost-nets removed will be properly disposes and possibly recycled. Universities will provide the scientific monitoring of the AGF actions with a Monitoring Report, which will summarize the results in 3 areas.
Pilot action: endowment of fishing equipment with RFID micro-chips
6K single parts of fishing gears/nets and fishing equipment like traps and lines (the average equipment of 60 small boats) will be marked with microchips to make possible their "localization" and "traceability" through RFID technology (radio frequency identification), thanks to the tasks of fishermen's involvement and training run respectively by WP T1 and WP T2. Microchips will be given to fishermen free-of-use and might be distributed also to those not directly involved in training activities.
Stakeholder's management Report
ADRINET aims at involving a relevant (min 10/country) number of agencies, PAs, NGOs who are external to the project's partnership. Engaging these newcomers is not easy and needs time and efforts in terms of meetings and PR. Each partner will be involved in this long-lasting action aimed at getting relevant local stakeholders to sign the project MoU, with the final purpose to define a common, multilateral and transborder policy for the sustainable use of fishing and for ghost-fishing tackling.
A Cross-Border Team Developing Joint Solutions for the Region
Considering that the transnational cooperation program is aimed at addressing common challenges that were identified in the region, we are acting together to enable better management and sustainable use of natural and human resources in order to contribute to the environmental protection of the region.
