Progetti di ricerca

Sustainable management of Mediterranean Marine Biodiversity is a key-priority of EU programs and actions, with the aim of integrating marine diversity protection and human development. Two main gaps need to be filled to achieve this goal: the overall lack of understanding of… Leggi tutto European citizens’ conceptions and misconception on the sea; the lack or oversimplification, both in political and scientific debate, of “diversity” as a key driver acting on the relationship among European citizens and marine biodiversity. MEDiverSEAty is a transnational project based on several local case studies with the aim of filling these gaps, through the implementation of a Doctoral Network Training and Research Program in 6 European countries (IT, ES, FR, EL, ME, MT), a novelty in the educational and scientific panorama of marine science and biodiversity management. MEDiverSEAty develops an international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral Training Program for 10 PhD Candidates who, in a medium term perspective, will form a community of early career researchers trained in the study of marine biodiversity, via joint research projects in both academic and non-academic settings, with local and network training, open science and complementary skills. The project is based on two keypillars of contemporary marine sciences, policies and education, with an interdisciplinary approach that tackles the barriers that continue to exist among the biological sciences, the humanities and social sciences, and the study of environmental governance: Ocean Literacy and Marine Biodiversity Conservation. The scientific research objectives of MEDiverSEAty are to develop a common theoretical framework of Mediterranean Marine Biodiversity Conservation which integrates human and biological dimensions and implications, to foster the crucial role of human dimensions in the protection and conservation of Marine Biodiversity and to make Biodiversity the focus of Mediterranean Ocean Literacy

UNESCO's One Planet, One Ocean stated "we need to change the way we think and act". EC policies and scientific engagement on protection and sustainable management of the ocean have reached high articulation. However, a unifying perspective is still missing… Leggi tutto when it comes to behavioural and cultural change. As the ocean is an essential resource for life and it is also the primary sink for anthropic carbon and anthropic heat, RE-OCEAN targets the ocean as the major actor in climate change, the one where there is the widest margin for effective intervention. Summoning a large interdisciplinary spectrum, including marine studies, the law, philosophy, biology, cognitive science, geography, it promotes a reconceptualization of the ocean as the indispensable basis to deeply modify behavioural, social and cultural attitudes, and fostering a "culture-of-the seas" long-term transition towards a durable socio-political horizon for marine spaces management. The project's inspiring vision are innovative instruments recognizing and legitimating the ocean within the European legal framework. To that effect, RE-OCEAN a) reviews entrenched and dysfunctional misconceptions on the ocean along with new perspectives in a trans-disciplinary perspective; b) designs and experimentally validates a toolkit of transformative conceptual instruments that involve these reconceptualizations; c) optimises the transfer of research outcomes through an evidence-based package (i.e. recommendations, practices, methods) that interface supranational but also contextual and local legal frameworks. The RE-OCEAN toolkit deploys 10 experiments replicated in six countries to validate practical tools of conceptual innovation on how people can relate to the sea in the law, in education and economy practices. The Mediterranean basin will be the core testing region of the consortium (I, ES, FR, GR, MNE, MLT); validated outcomes will be applied to the European Atlantic coast (FR, UK, NL) and to the Indian Ocean.