- The Biodiversity Foundation will manage the call, aimed at organizations in the agricultural sector, local entities and entities in the scientific field
- The projects will be eligible for grants of between €300,000 and €2M and will have co-financing of up to 90% and a duration of up to three years
The Council of Ministers has approved the call for a line of aid from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) worth €20M, for the promotion of projects demonstrating best practices in the agricultural field, which contribute to the ecological transition in agriculture and the reduction of impacts at source in the Mar Menor catchment basin. Its ultimate objective is to achieve the restoration of the natural balance of the area in a way that is compatible with the sustainability of agricultural activity. The call seeks to generate scalable, replicable, innovative, science-based experiences with the maximum involvement and participation of farmers. It aims to obtain ambitious results in aspects such as the reduction of agrochemical inputs, organic fertilizers, irrigation returns and erosive processes. With this, it seeks to improve the quality of the soil and reduce the demand for water resources, to achieve an environmental and biodiversity improvement in the agricultural area of the Mar Menor catchment basin.
The call is based on the premise that the agroecological transition requires the involvement of all social actors, with farmers as a fundamental part of the solution. Thus, different types of beneficiaries can opt for the aid, including professional and interprofessional agricultural organizations and other entities with legal personality in the agricultural field (producer organizations, cooperatives, communities of agricultural assets, etc.), as well as local entities, non-profit entities and scientific entities, which has a key role in the search for and application of innovative solutions to the problems suffered by the Mar Menor. The call also allows groups of beneficiaries from up to six entities.
From the beginning, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) and representatives of the agricultural sector have collaborated and participated in the design of the subsidies.
The selected projects must be developed in the agricultural area within the Mar Menor catchment basin (defined in Annex 1 of Law 3/2020, of 27 July, on the recovery and protection of the Mar Menor), belonging to the municipalities of San Pedro del Pinatar, San Javier, Los Alcázares, Torre Pacheco, Fuente Álamo de Murcia, Cartagena, La Unión, Murcia, Mazarrón and Alhama de Murcia. PROMOTION OF ECOLOGICAL BALANCE IN THE MAR MENOR
The Biodiversity Foundation will be in charge of managing the call, which includes grants of between €300,000 and €2M. The selected initiatives may be extended for three years from the granting of the aid. The selection of projects will be carried out on a competitive basis, taking into account technical, strategic, environmental and social criteria. The grants will allow the development of different actions, such as the use of Nature-based Solutions (NBS) and the implementation of good agricultural practices to reduce impacts at source (such as plant structures or green filters), changes in cultivation practices (such as green roofs or the use of biosolutions) or the diversification and conversion of crops. It also contemplates the creation of new agricultural models that allow a change in governance and territorial planning for the protection and improvement of ecological, landscape and natural values, as well as actions to improve the marketing and differentiation of products in the markets by good environmental practices, and training actions, training, dissemination and transfer of results. The call approved by the Council of Ministers complies with the commitment to restoration and environmental improvement in agricultural holdings by reducing the impacts of their activities at source, which is included in the Framework of Priority Actions to recover the Mar Menor.
