Empowering Community Led Action in the Atlantic & Arctic (ACT-AA) aims to mobilise and engage communities across the Atlantic and Arctic regions in ambitious efforts to restore and protect marine and freshwater ecosystems. By fostering community-led initiatives, the project seeks to make significant progress toward the objectives of the EU Mission “Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030.” ACT-AA will provide comprehensive support to local stakeholders, including financial aid through cascading grants, technical assistance, and capacity-building resources to ensure effective and sustainable ecosystem restoration actions. ACT-AA’s key components include: 1. Cascading Grants for Community-Led Pilot Actions: Awarding at least 5 grants ranging from EUR 200,000 to EUR 2 million each to innovative projects addressing local ecological and socio-economic challenges. 2. Support for Transition Agendas: Funding at least 20 strategic roadmaps, each up to EUR 100,000, to guide communities in achieving the Mission’s objectives and ensuring long-term sustainability. 3. Technical Assistance: Providing tailored support, including business plan development, impact assessments, and capacity-building programs, to enhance local stakeholders’ ability to implement and scale innovative solutions. Expected outcomes include: 1. Demonstrable, measurable progress towards the Mission’s objectives through well-managed, community-led actions. 2. Support for EU member states and stakeholders in implementing marine and freshwater ecosystem related legislation. 3. Increased engagement and resource mobilization from communities to restore oceans, seas, and waters. 4. Enhanced readiness at the local level to deploy innovative restoration solutions. ACT-AA will ensure broad participation, leveraging local knowledge and fostering long-term commitment to ecosystem protection, thus contributing significantly to the European Green Deal’s biodiversity, pollution, and climate targets.

The BioEcoOcean project proposes a foundational change in how we approach biological and ecosystem (BioEco) ocean observation to enhance scientific understanding, improve management, and ensure sustainable use and development of the ocean. Our multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approach emphasises co-creation with diverse stakeholders to develop a Blueprint for Integrated Ocean Science (BIOS) to support and encourage operational workflows adhering to FAIR Data Principles. This innovative product promotes holistic thinking, facilitates communication, and strengthens the Ocean Observing Value Chain. The project also includes a strong research component, advancing data collection, monitoring, dataflows, and models for BioEco Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs). We will operate in living labs, co-creating with stakeholders, generating new primary data, and leveraging existing data and observing infrastructure globally. Key objectives include developing an inclusive co-created Blueprint, advancing EOV implementation, assessing current practices and technological options, delivering excellent research, co-creating operational workflows, and prioritising capacity building. The project will increase the technology readiness levels (TRL) of critical components of BioEco ocean observation systems and tools and in particular the TRL of the integrated ocean observing system. The project will prioritise capacity building and collaboration with global ocean observation initiatives, e.g. GOOS and MBON, as well as with the overall Biodiversity monitoring community, e.g. GEO BON, that seeks to develop a global framework for biodiversity monitoring, in the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to ensure wide discussion and adoption of its co-produced standards. Overall, this project will significantly impact and strengthen various sectors and stakeholders involved in ocean and biodiversity observation and management, from local to National to Global levels.

The societal need for sustainable exploitation of aquatic resources, requires support to monitoring need to ensure sustainable fishing, increasingly resorting to aquaculture, and a tighter control on fishing activities provides an opportunity for commercial EO services in this area. Based on Copernicus and GEOSS data and resources, it is now possible to implement commercially-oriented services for 1) fishing authorities wishing to have an improved control over marine resources; 2) responsible fishing companies willing to certify their compliance to sustainability by ecolabeling fish provenance; 3) the fast growing aquaculture industry assessing their risks and potential revenues; and 4) aquaculture regulators in understanding the impact of fish farms, in order to decide based on bespoke scientific solutions. NextOcean is proposed by a consortium of companies, research institutions, a business school and a buyers group supporting the development of innovative services. It targets fishing and aquaculture by proposing EO commercial services for the public and private sectors. It builds on past activities, proposing an integrated solution. The services will address 4User Scenarios: Monitoring Fishing Activities and Impact; Mimisation of Bycatch and Ecolabeling; Monitoring Aquaculture Impacts; and New Fish Farms. The involvement of the potential clients is done progressively, with an initial group of Alpha Users already engaged, supporting co-design of solutions. The buyers group is then enlarged to a wider group of beta testers and potential clients, who will define further evolutions, and the path to integration into their decision-making processes. NextOcean will define clear KPIs and success criteria for the services, including on the integration in the value chain. Dedicated workshops and training sessions will be held with the larger community, where the services will be advertised, explained and assessed in light of the interests and knowledge of the communities

Global change will have significant impacts at regional and coastal scales on marine systems, dependent socioeconomic systems, ocean services and can strongly interact with regional pressures. CE2COAST delivers transnational added value through strategically combining national expertise across oceanography, marine biogeochemistry and ecology, data and database management, earth system, marine and ecosystem modelling and science policy communication. The primary novelty of will be an observation-driven synthesis of downscaling methodology to provide better process resolution and system representations that are tailored to regional/coastal domains and their associated pressures/services. It will compile and analyze new targeted, fit-for-purpose marine observations datasets from existing and new project observations of ocean climate, biogeochemistry and relevant ecological indicators. We will deliver Earth System Model simulations from the CMIP archive that will be downscaled for hindcasting and projecting physical and biogeochemical fields in the regional and coastal ocean providing past/future states and climate change signals. A capacity to understand and predict these impacts on regional seas and coasts is essential for developing robust strategies for adaptation and mitigation. To inform adaptation policy to ocean and coastal change, we will deliver key new knowledge to end-users through dissemination activities. We will integrate stakeholder clusters in project-long decision making for co-production of relevant science products for specific scientific, management, regulatory, industrial and ocean service applicable assessments to deliver an integrated European evaluation of marine health. It will contribute knowledge crucial to reducing economic, scientific and social disparity across Europe. We will encourage knowledge transfer through common goals with a focus on JPI Climate and Oceans, IPCC, UN SDGs, MSP, CFP, MSFD, WFD and the Arctic Council.

OKEANO will provide support to the All-Atlantic Ocean Research and Innovation Alliance (AAORIA), enabling delivery on the goals of the All-Atlantic Declaration and empowering an All-Atlantic Ocean community to sustainably manage the Atlantic Ocean. With objectives that reflect the Alliance motto Connecting-Cooperating-Acting, OKEANO will serve to scale and transition the Alliance to a long-term, sustainable and highly impactful international partnership, capable of delivering transformative science and innovation, and concrete benefits for Atlantic communities. It will provide professional support to the core activities of the AAORIA as well as advice on effective long-term governance frameworks and legacy, consolidate and strengthen existing initiatives aligned with the priorities of the All-Atlantic Declaration, facilitate structured dialogue and coordination between the AAORIA and All-Atlantic stakeholders at national, regional and international levels, design and carry out inclusive capacity development initiatives for Atlantic communities, develop an All-Atlantic Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda to support the coordination of marine and maritime research and innovation activities with All-Atlantic stakeholders, and maximise the impact of the project through effective and engaging dissemination, exploitation and communication activities. OKEANO will also support to the organisation, monitoring, communication, and outreach activities of three All-Atlantic Fora. The consortium comprises 15 organisations, ensuring a comprehensive geographical coverage along and across the Atlantic Ocean of countries that endorse the All-Atlantic Declaration. Furthermore, the consortium represents a balanced mixture of unique capabilities, knowledge and access to relevant stakeholder and citizen networks needed to pursue the objectives of the project.