The BETA TC participates in CARDIMED, a wide-ranging project to boost Nature-Based Solutions in the Mediterranean

The BETA Technology Center has started its participation in a new European project, CARDIMED, which under the coordination of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) will bring together more than 50 partners to work on boosting nature-based solutions (also known as NBS) as a measure to increase the climate resilience of the Mediterranean region.

In the CARDIMED project, which has a budget of twenty million euros, the BETA Technology Center will contribute its previous experience working with NBS for water resource management, and also in other areas such as the circular bioeconomy, and the valorization of resources or the study of biodiversity. During the five-year project, the CARDIMED consortium will test a wide variety of NBS in nine European regions in Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Spain. The NBS it will work on include many different aspects, such as the environmental restoration of rivers, the creation of wetlands, community gardens or new forms of forest management, among others. The project also plans to replicate these experiences in five other regions, including Catalonia.

All the experience gained will be important to develop a new digital infrastructure to harmonize the processes of collecting and evaluating data from the value chain of the NBSs tested under the project. This will be an important step in order to better assess the real impacts of NBS at the regional scale, as well as to start creating new decision-making tools to facilitate their implementation.

Ultimately, it hopes to provide much more comprehensive knowledge to help address the socio-ecological challenges that are currently limiting their deployment, better demonstrating their validity and potential for building climate resilience in the Mediterranean region.