PEGASO – People for Ecosystem-based Governance in Assessing Sustainable development of Ocean and coast
The main objective of PEGASO is to build on existing capacities and develop common novel approaches to support integrated policies for the coastal, marine and maritime realms of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins in ways that are consistent with and relevant to the implementation of the ICZM Protocol for the Mediterranean.
PEGASO is consistent with the frameworks of the Barcelona and Bucharest Conventions which seek to achieve a coordinated approach to sustainable resource management and development, and to protect these regional seas and the quality of life of their peoples. It also continues ICZM efforts, supporting new marine and maritime policies.
PEGASO will use the model of the existing ICZM Protocol for the Mediterranean and adjust it to the needs of the Black Sea through three innovative actions:
- Constructing an ICZM governance platform as a bridge between scientist and end user communities, going far beyond a conventional bridging. The building of a shared scientific and end users platform is at the heart of our proposal linked with new models of governance.
- Refine and further develop efficient and easy to use tools for making sustainability assessments in the coastal zone (indicators, accounting methods and models, scenarios). They will be tested and validated in a multi_scale approach for integrated regional assessment.
- Implementation of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), following INSPIRE Directive, to organize and standardize spatial data to support information sharing on an interactive visor, to make it available to the ICZM Platform, and to disseminate all results of the project to the end users and interested parties.
The activities of the unit within the project will be articulated with the following main activities:
- review of DSSs, geographical indicators and sclimate change scenarios to be used for multiscale ICZM processes across the Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins
- development of environmental and socio-economic geographical indicators supporting hazard, vulnerability and risk assessment guiding the definition of effective ICZM and adaptation strategies;
- implementation of a GIS-based DSS for the assessment of climate change related impacts on coastal systems. The DSS will be based on an ecosystem approach that will support the application of the ICZM protocol and will be used for the North Adriatic case study.