Kotorska Bay in Montenegro
The Pro-Coast project is about the riches of nature (biodiversity) in European coastal ecosystems. Around 40% of Europeans live within 100km of the coast, where there is continuing loss of natural services that provide food, water, health and recreation. This loss affects some livelihoods and groups of people more than others. Pro-Coast aims to help local communities maintain and restore the riches and services of nature across Europe, by encouraging use of local knowledge and activities that benefit land, sea and species.
Our 20 partners across 14 countries bring together social scientists, ecologists and technical experts with an unusually wide set of skills. They will work in 9 case studies to discover how local people would like to restore a variety of coastal ecosystems.
Sligo beach in the Irish Republic
People are part of nature, connected in many and complex ways. Thus, for nature to improve, we need to identify easy ways for its human stewards to make transformative changes. Pro-Coast will help local communities to make wise decisions that benefit nature, its services and associated livelihoods, in repeated cycles of deciding-together, applying and assessing. We will do this by working together with citizens, guided by state-of-the-art science – a bottom-up process. Then, by working together with other projects and organisations that help, we will scale-out the approach and encourage governments to provide top-down assistance.