Project / Initiative
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LIFE MIDMACC
Mid-mountain adaptation to climate change
Creaf leader
Creaf leader
Creaf leader
Participant
Participant
The main objective is to promote adaptation through the implementation and testing of different landscape management measures to meet climate change related challenges in marginal mid-mountain areas of Spain, while improving their socioeconomic development.
Climate change adaptation measures in Southern Europe should include effective land management of mountain areas, since they are the major source of freshwater in lowlands through their perennial and intermittent rivers. Moreover, they are vulnerable regions to many physical and anthropogenic impacts. Recently, rural abandonment of mountain slopes has incrementally induced a dramatic decrease of the landscape mosaic. All these processes combine together to make Southern European Mountains highly sensitive to climate change, particularly the limited water resources downstreams. The conversion and/or maintenance of heterogeneous agro-forest-pastoral land mosaics can be considered an excellent approach for climate change adaptation, given that they support higher biodiversity, provide vital ecosystem services, and are more sustainable and resilient to climate change. Landscape diversification also enhances the sustainability of agricultural and forest environments and their economic incomes.
Conclusions
LIFE MIDMACC will develop the following tasks:
1. To develop and implement landscape adaptation in marginal mid-mountain areas in order to improve their environmental and socio-economic resilience to climate change.
2. To assess the socio-economic and ecologic effectiveness of the proposed measures, considering a multi-sectorial and multi-scale approach that determines related implications through widespread monitoring and modelling.
3. To involve key managers and economic and environmental agents in the design, development and assessment of the climate change adaptation measures, promoting an earlier involvement of stakeholder regional committees in the decision making of the project.
4. To create a coordinated policy framework among regional governments to improve the sustainable use of marginal mid-mountain areas.
5. To develop Integrated climate change Adaptation Guidelines for mid-mountain areas.
6. To raise awareness at local and regional levels about issues linked to societal and environmental climate change adaptation in mountainous areas.
7. To support the application and further development of European policies related to climate change adaptation in mountainous rural areas.
