- The meeting highlighted the role of this financial instrument in the conservation of habitats and species in Europe, which in Spain has supported more than 920 projects with an economic contribution of close to 830 million euros
- The event coincides with a conference with journalists to publicize the marine ecosystem restoration actions of the LIFE ECOREST project, coordinated by the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and in which the MITECO Biodiversity Foundation participates as a partner
December 15, 2022- The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), through the Biodiversity Foundation and the National Focal Point of the LIFE programme, managed by the Budget Office, has commemorated the 30th anniversary of the European Union’s LIFE programme in an event in which the successes in the conservation of habitats and species in Spain achieved thanks to this European Union financial instrument have been shared. The meeting was attended by the European Commission’s European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). In this framework, the contribution of the European Union’s LIFE programme, a fundamental tool for the conservation of biodiversity, has been highlighted. 30 years ago, the European Parliament created the LIFE Programme in an international context where the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the Maastricht Treaty gave environmental action the character of a political objective. Since then, the LIFE Programme has become the benchmark financial instrument that best represents the European Union’s will to achieve its environmental and climate objectives. In these three decades, LIFE has financed more than 5,000 projects throughout Europe and has invested more than 5,600 million euros in the conservation of biodiversity, the protection of water, the fight against air pollution and waste management. In the current 2021-2027 funding period, a new objective was included: to fight climate change, a global problem with serious environmental, social and economic dimensions. In Spain, the LIFE programme is a fundamental tool for the conservation of biodiversity and the fight against climate change and has supported 924 projects with a financial contribution of €826.5 million and a total investment of €1,639 million, with our country being the main beneficiary of the European Union in the period 2014-2020. For this reason, the challenge for the 2021-2027 period is to maintain the quality and quantity of the Spanish proposals presented. Thanks to projects promoted by this programme, it has been possible to recover multiple endangered species in Spain such as the Iberian lynx, the imperial eagle, the brown bear, the bearded vulture or the Cartagena rockrose. Likewise, it has been key to the declaration of protected areas, their management and recovery, both on land and in the sea, through which Spain has gone from having less than 0.5% of its marine area protected to more than 8%, which has contributed to the consolidation of the Natura 2000 Network as the largest network of protected areas in the world.
VISIT TO THE LIFE ECOREST PERFORMANCES
The commemoration coincided with a day in which the results obtained during the development of the LIFE ECOREST project, coordinated by the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and in which the Biodiversity Foundation participates as a partner, were announced. This initiative aims to recover and restore deep marine habitats along the coast of Girona and Barcelona and to demonstrate the effectiveness of participatory management of the fishing sector. For this reason, a visit has been carried out that has allowed different media to learn first-hand and on the ground some of the actions carried out in this LIFE project. Specifically, the aquarium located in the Vilanova i la Geltrú brotherhood (Barcelona) has been visited, the first of the 18 that are planned to be installed in the project in different brotherhoods located in its area of action. These facilities will be used to recover corals, gorgonians and other organisms accidentally caught in the nets during the exercise of fishing activity before returning them to the sea, a process in which the collaboration of the sector is essential. After their recovery, they will be returned to the sea through the badminton method. It is a technique in which corals and gorgonians adhere to a rocky substrate that keeps them erect and are thrown into the sea directly from boats. Marine restoration actions such as this are vitally important to accelerate the natural resilience of these marine communities, which are in a poor state of conservation after decades of impacts from human activity. Restoration is a great ally that allows reversing the situation of degradation and conserving natural heritage.
LIFE ECOREST PROJECT
The project plans to restore more than 29,000 hectares of deep marine habitats, distributed in 14 fisheries protection zones along the coast of Girona and Barcelona, an area of action of great ecological importance due to the high concentration of endangered, threatened or vulnerable species, including gorgonians, black corals and several species of sponges. This initiative, coordinated by the ICM-CSIC, has as partners the Territorial Federation of Fishermen’s Guilds of Girona, the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, the University of Barcelona and WWF Spain, as well as the financial contribution of the LIFE Program of the European Union.
