MaCoBioS Blue NbS Toolbox

Our societies are actively seeking solutions to address the crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. In this context, the European Horizon 2020 project MaCoBioS (2020-2024) supports effective and integrated management and conservation strategies for marine and coastal ecosystems to face climate change. Our goals were: to better understand the inter-relations between climate change, biodiversity, functions and services in marine and coastal ecosystems; to assess the vulnerability of marine and coastal socio-ecological systems under climate change scenarios; to evaluate the effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) at enhancing the resilience capacity of ecosystems and societies; and to provide evidence-based guidance for policy formulation and innovative research pathways. The project outputs aim to increase the uptake of and investment in marine and coastal NbS that benefit both biodiversity and climate adaptation and mitigation, while ultimately improving human health and well-being, in line with the UN SDGs 3, 13 and 14. Implementation of Nature-based Solutions in marine and coastal environments (blue NbS) is slow. Reasons vary but include a lack of supportive tools for practitioners. The MaCoBioS Blue NbS Toolbox (https://macobios.eu/toolbox/) is a collection of multidisciplinary tools and products to facilitate the design and implementation of NbS. This Toolbox addresses critical questions: What happens to the ecosystem and its services under different scenarios? Why and where is managing local pressures essential given future ecosystem distributions under climate change? Where can we find the most favourable conditions for intervention? How can potential interventions (protection, restoration and other management measures) be applied within a local specific socio-environmental context? This presentation offers a synthesis of the main outputs of the MaCoBioS project and an introduction to its Toolbox.