The final symposium of the LIFE Adaptamed project held last November in Malaga brought together environmental and conservation experts, park managers and academics from the Euro-Mediterranean region with the goal of exchanging the learnings obtained in different restoration and adaptation projects to climate change in natural spaces.



Over 70 experts from a wide range of institutions, inclusing the universities of Granada, Malaga and Almería, the Doñana Biological Station, the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (CSIC), the Junta de Andalucía and IUCN discussed the most appropriate management interventions to preserve the services and benefits provided by natural spaces to society, which are currently threatened by the effects of climate change.

The title of the symposium "Protecting ecosystem services through adaptive management" highlights the interest of the "adaptive management" model implemented within LIFE Adaptamed. Given the current climate change scenarios, this methodology offers a particularly advantageous approach, as it assumes the uncertainty and variability of natural processes and, therefore, the need for continuous learning that enhances the effectiveness of management in highly changing scenarios like the current ones. This adaptive management scheme also favours the interaction between various actors and stakeholders around these spaces.

“The experience of LIFE Adaptamed shows us how adaptive management can help to protect the valuable ecosystem services and goods provided by protected areas, such as carbon sequestration, water supply, provision of raw materials and food, biodiversity conservation or the capacity to resist extreme weather events ”, stresses Francisco Javier Cano, coordinator of LIFE Adaptamed. LIFE Adaptamed has developed ecological restoration measures in three emblematic natural areas͗ in Andalusia: Cabo de Gata-Níjar, Sierra Nevada and Doñana.



Nature-based Solutions

“The participation of local actors and communities in this type of actions is essential, both to ensure the sustainability of management, and for the resilience of ecosystems to climate change. In this sense, LIFE Adaptamed provides examples of interventions aligned with the concept of Nature-based Solutions ", explains Andrés Alcántara, technical coordinator at the IUCN Center for Mediterranean Cooperation project."

In the LIFE Adaptamed project, the restoration of irrigation ditches in the Sierra Nevada National Park is arguably one of the best examples of Nature-based Solutions. As a result of these actions, a considerable increase in water availability has been achieved with the help of local communities, and which has eventually become available for agriculture, livestock, human consumption and increased the levels of biodiversity in mountainous areas, which are strongly impacted by the effects of climate change.

On the other hand, within the framework of this event, various manuals were presented, among others, on governance for adaptation to climate change in natural spaces and oak forest management, as well as a computer application designed to support decision-making for naturalisation of pine forests: DiverPine.

Likewise, the event was attended by representatives of the Malaga Provincial Council and the Europarc Foundation, as well as environmental experts from other LIFE programs in Spain and Europe and Nature-based Solutions practitioners from the Balkans and Malta, who participated in talks and round tables to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and to find synergies and potentials ways of cooperating.



The event, which was live-streamed on the project's social networks both in English and Spanish, closed with a visit to the recently declared “Sierra de las Nieves National Park”, where the LIFE Adaptamed experience is intended to be transferred and further developed. In turn, the data obtained in the project will contribute to the Andalusian Network of Global Change Observatories.

LIFE Adaptamed is led by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development of the Junta de Andalucía the project partnership is made up by other six entities:  the Andalusian Environment and Water Agency, the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC), the University of Almería (CAESCG), the University of Granada (IISTA), IUCN, the Andalusian Park of Sciences and the company Aguas de Fontvella y de Lanjarón S.A. (Danone).



Photo © LIFE Adaptamed