SoS2LearnDBS aims to drive community-led restoration of oceans, seas, and waters, by applying a comprehensive, multi-pillar approach to the Danube River basin and Black Sea region. By enhancing water literacy and community engagement through cooperative learning and capacity-building programs, the project will empower local stakeholders to implement innovative solutions across multiple areas, including technological, nature-based, social, cultural, regulatory, financial, and governance approaches. Strategic planning and adaptive management will support the creation of transition agendas that align with regional and EU environmental restoration goals. Two forms of cascade funding (FSTP) and technical assistance will be provided to communities of actors, emphasizing practical skills, resource access, and social innovation to ensure sustainable and scalable restoration efforts. Initiatives benefiting from this funding must make a clear contribution to the Mission Ocean objectives and targets of protecting and restoring marine and freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity, preventing and eliminating pollution, and/or advancing a carbon-neutral, circular blue economy. The project will implement a robust monitoring and evaluation framework to track progress and incorporate continuous feedback to optimize outcomes. Communication, dissemination, and exploitation activities will leverage digital platforms, gamification, and interactive tools to engage a wide range of stakeholders and maximize the project’s reach and impact. SoS2LearnDBS will align with existing EU initiatives, including the Mission Ocean Implementation Platform and other Lighthouse projects, contributing to the broader objective of restoring Europe’s marine and freshwater ecosystems by 2030. The consortium’s geographical span and expertise uniquely position it to support the transition to the deployment and upscaling phase of Mission Ocean, fostering impactful and lasting change.

The 2030 & 2050 Green Deal goals push EU towards integrated solutions & clear targets. EcoDaLLi, embedded in the Mission 'Restore our Ocean, seas & waters by 2030' will help achieve freshwater targets of European Green Deal, integrating a systemic approach for restoration, protection & preservation for the entire Danube Basin, provided by coordinated actions. The main objective of EcoDaLLi is to centralise Danube governance structures in terms of innovative solutions for improved ecological restoration, protection and preservation of the Danube basin and its Delta by fostering a stronger innovation ecosystem within a well-connected Practices Living Lab System, supported by a digital Portal, completly linked to the Mission Implementation Platform. Innovative solutions open new opportunities for better water restoration, taking into consideration social innovation aspects, reducing climate change effects and reducing also costs. An improved governance at Danube Basin level, based on dedicated EcoDaLLi tools will foster such innovative solutions, change mindsets on water ecosystems restoration and climate change and develop value chains based on ecosystem services. This will contribute to the decarbonisation goal of Green Deal, cleaner water, improved state of the environment, land creation of jobs in sensitive areas along the basin, especially in the Danube Delta. EcoDaLLi will support innovators connect to governance structures, providing and maintaining networks, trough dedicated Living Labs for knowledge co-creation, workshops, a custom made digital portal for synergies, and innovation support services, to experiment with new solutions, helping the innovation ecosystem to create circular services towards Sustainable Blue Economy in the Danube Basin and beyond.

DAnube WETlands REStoration (DaWetRest) Lighthouse is designed to develop and demonstrate (pilot) concrete solutions applied on the Danube basin to address the challenges faced by its inland and coastal wetlands ecosystems’, namely on (i) biodiversity, (ii) water quality and availability, (iii) climate resilience and/or neutrality and (iv) socio-economic benefits for the local communities. These transformative and innovative solutions will be validated by local communities and main Regional and European-wide stakeholders. DaWetRest has the role to prepare and plan the replication, deployment and scaling up of the validated innovative solutions for the next mission’s phase. For this important scope, DaWetRest project proposes several strong ideas, such as (i) building and selecting interventions based on extensive and prior know-how (sibling sites and non-EU experiences), (ii) local, regional and basin scale integrated interdependent analysis of results from the planned interventions, (iii) merge DaWetRest own data, models and digital tools with existing and future ones, towards a centralized knowledge centre in the future and (iv) involve the managing authorities and a number of local actors in the entire process, from the very beginning. Thus, DaWetRest results will accelerate and generalize the deployment of innovative solutions in the second phase of the Mission. The demonstration of innovative and result-oriented solutions is organized in 3 DEMOs - DEMO Middle Danube (MD), DEMO Lower Danube (LD) and DEMO Danube Delta (DD). Each DEMO offers main intervention sites, pilots, sibling locations, replications, platforms/services, local stakeholders engagement and methodologies to strengthen the innovation, knowledge and cooperation in and beyond DaWetRest in Danube basin and across Europe. Via a widely representative consortium as well as active cooperation (e.g. Community of Practices), DaWetRest will provide tools for a significant transformation in the Danube.