DISTENDER will provide integrated strategies by building a methodological framework that guide the integration of climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation strategies through participatory approaches in ways that respond to the impacts and risks of climate change (CC), supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis that facilitates the understanding of interactions, synergies and trade-offs. Holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation must be tailored to the context-specific situation and this requires a flexible and participatory planning process to ensure legitimate and salient action, carried out by all important stakeholders. DISTENDER will develop a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative socio-economic-climate scenarios through a facilitated participatory process that integrates bottom-up knowledge and locally-relevant drivers with top-down information from the global European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and downscaled Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC. A cross-sectorial and multi-scale impact assessment modelling toolkit will be developed to analyse the complex interactions over multiple sectors, including an economic evaluation framework. The economic impact of the different efforts will be analyse, including damage claim settlement and how do sectoral activity patterns change under various scenarios considering indirect and cascading effects. It is an innovative project combining three key concepts: cross-scale, integration/harmonization and robustness checking. DISTENDER will follow a pragmatic approach applying methodologies and toolkits across a range of European case studies (six core case studies and five followers) that reflect a cross-section of the challenges posed by CC adaptation and mitigation. The knowledge generated by DISTENDER will be offered by a Decision Support System (DSS) which will include guidelines, manuals, easy-to-use tools and experiences from the application of the cases studies.

The main goal of BlueGreen Governance is to develop innovative land-sea governance schemes based on scientific evidence and societal choices. The current management of oceans, seas and coasts is fragmented across multiple institutional layers and policy areas and based on past experience. BlueGreen Governance pursues an innovative approach to the governance of the seas and coastal areas that: promotes integration between institutional layers and across policy sectors with a clear impact on the use of the land and the sea; involves and engages citizens in decision-making processes, while at the same time including scientific evidence; responds predictively to changing physical conditions as indicated by scientific evidence as well as indigenous and local knowledge and citizen science; and uses e-governance tools in support of the previous three points. With this focus and approach, the project responds to the need for better-informed decision-making processes, social engagement and digital innovation while promoting more harmonious and effective science-policy-society interfaces. The promotion of better science-policy, science-society and society-policy interactions will be embedded in the digital transformation and application of e-governance tools for co-design and service delivery. BlueGreen Governance will implement and assess these innovative governance schemes in 8 cases across several European regions and sea basins and will draw lessons on how to trigger and facilitate effective institutional change via capacity building. The cases are: Comunidad Valenciana; North Adriatic; the Solent; Western Scheldt; Oslofjord; Canary Islands and Reunion. With this geographical scope, the project will investigate five marine basins (Western Mediterranean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean), including one transnational marine basin (i.e. the North Adriatic case) and one transnational river basin (i.e. the Western Scheldt case).

The overarching objective of Connecting Nature is to position Europe as a global leader in the innovation and implementation of nature-based solutions. The project partners will form a community of cities fostering peer-to-peer, transdisciplinary capacity-building between front-runner, fast-follower and multiplier cities. Connecting Nature will co-develop the policy and practices necessary to scale up urban resilience, innovation and governance via nature-based solutions. An open innovation ecosystem approach bringing together city governments, SMEs, academia and civic society will be used to co-produce usable and actionable knowledge in all cities. Connecting Nature will provide the reference framework for a new generation of urban nature-based solution processes and empower transitioning ambassadors who will globalise this approach through a strategy targeting multiplier cities. This novel approach, coupled with the high capacity of the consortium, makes Connecting Nature an exciting prospect. In addition, linking all open-sourced data to the Oppla platform will ensure perpetuation beyond the end of the project.

PROSPERITY will: 1. Produce a culture shift in terms of environment for SUMPs in member states and in the organisational culture of transport planning in city authorities. 2. Get ministries and national agencies to play a national leading role on SUMPs, as in many member states these are the organisations from which cities take their main direction; where ministries are already playing this role, to support and strengthen their approach. 3. To provide mechanisms and tools for Ministries to take this lead role. 4. Analyse clearly the problems of (lack of) take-up of SUMPs – to understand from cities themselves why they are not taken up and then to help cities to address these barriers. 5. Extend the existing 25-county EU-SUMP-network with at least two more countries 6. Get more cities to take up effective high quality SUMPs – through cities’ involvement in the project and indirectly through more cities hearing about SUMPs in their country. 7. Ensure that these SUMPs contain and will lead to implementation of a broad range of innovative sustainable transport measures. 8. Build cities’ capacity to develop and implement SUMPs that genuinely reflect the spirit of the EU SUMP Guidelines, rather than being mandatory documents to fulfil a requirement linked to major transport infrastructure. 9. Deliver a measurable impact. The core concept of PROSPERITY is bringing ministries into the project, which will significantly enhance the visibility of the project at the national level and therefore increase numbers of cities active on SUMPs. Thus PROSPERITY will ensure that more cities commit to SUMPs that are in line with the EU SUMP Guidelines and that include a broad range of innovative measures. This will generate a high leverage factor, especially in regions and cities where take up is so far low and the impacts from transport are severe – therefore the majority of PROSPERITY activities is in such regions and cities - thus in southern, central-eastern and eastern Europe.