13 projects

As individual and as a society, we must take responsibility for our forests to ensure that the most feasible, economic and ecological measures are taken to protect them. First, we should seriously ask what is going wrong after decades of investigations in fire causes, in fire impact on the environment, on the properties and the health of the population, and after put so many efforts in fire prevention. Until now the control of forest fires has been based on theoretical and/or traditional models, but the negative data (number of fires/year and surface burned in ha) reported by the “Forest Fires in Europe” are asking for an innovative approach by using new techniques to prevent the start and the spreading of surface fires and to sensitize the population to the “risks of forest fires”. During the last years the European Commission put forest fires higher on the political agenda focusing more on the prevention and adapting our forests to challenges resulting from climatic changes. But the results obtained by this effort were very poor for the Southern Mediterranean countries. In fact, the number of fires and the surface of the burnt area increased in the last years (source Effis) in spite of the very big efforts (people and money) spent in the prevision and control of fires.

The questions of the P.O.Med CypFire were:

1. How we can overlap this stalemate?

It is necessary to change or better to improve the existent fire control approaches based on the coordination of alerting processes, the adaptation or creation of joint protocols, the development of platforms at a transnational level.

2. How it is possible to change the actual approach of defence against the start and the spreading of a forest fire?

The project CypFire  is suggesting a new control way based on the use of a multi rowed barrier of cypress (Cupressus sempervirens var. horizontalis), which can reduce the impact of the surface fires on the rural economy, on the soil protection, on the health of the communities and on the beauty of the Mediterranean landscape.

The MEDISS project aims to build a transnational network to promote the development of a Mediterranean flavors and fragrances industry, innovative and built on the principles of sustainable development.

The aim of the project is to capitalise on the strong values ​​of the sector in the Mediterranean area (naturalness, authenticity, identity) to foster a dynamic development over the entire productive chain.

The Flavors and Fragrances sector (herbs and perfume, cosmetics, flavorings and food) is present throughout the Mediterranean basin. This sector is strongly anchored to regional specificities, image carrier and generating a major induced economy (including tourism).

In order to build a sustainable network of cooperation, the project is structured around events promoting the sharing of knowledge, partnerships, emergence and support of innovative projects and identification of technical and scientific tools to enhance business and actors innovation capabilities.

It will ultimately be used to better promote local production in the sector with high added value of fragrances and flavours, build bridges between the two industries through the implementation of innovative projects.

NEXT intends to create a collaborative platform to support innovation and technology transfer in the Countries of the Adriatic area. The project is promoted by 11 partners from six Countries: Italy, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro and the representatives of different interests and positions of the actors of innovation: Universities, Regional Development Agencies, Chamber of Economy and Local Authorities. The project stems from some considerations:

• The borders of these Countries, known for years as places of exacerbation of national differences, represent nowadays concrete grounds for overcoming the restrictions and contrasts, and offer new opportunities in the field of research, innovation and technology transfer. The cross-border areas lie at the forefront of the main challenge that will increasingly be posed to the larger Europe: managing diversity and competitiveness while at the same time maintaining cohesion.
• Innovation and technology transfer, widely re-called in national and EU research programs, are in recent years facing new challenges due to factors such as: the impact of globalization; the emergence of new pervasive products and technologies; the difficulty in finding financial resources for R&I in particular in an atomized and undercapitalized industrial context; the consciousness that innovation takes place in "systems" or open networks, through the interaction of actors which are different in competences, skills, objectives.

PROFORBIOMED promotes renewable energies in rural areas by developing an integrated strategy for the use of forest biomass as a renewable energy source, improving forest management systems, recovering forest biomass potential and developing new opportunities and better governance. It involves all the stakeholders of rural areas and develops clusters and networks that bring together private and public actors, developing pilot projects on 13 issues that strength cooperation among actors.

Although Mediterranean forest areas generate a small commercial production, they provide many amenities to the society. They are subject to old and new uses (production, conservation of biodiversity, soil, water, carbon sequestration, recreation) that correspond to the needs of society and involve an increasing diversity of stakeholders. This sometimes leads to situations of conflict and misunderstanding, particularly in the Mediterranean region, the scene of suburban and tourist activities in which the pressures and challenges are increased. Moreover, one characteristic of the Mediterranean forests and woodlands is that their management concerns a wide variety of actors: managers, operators and manufacturers, owners, policy makers, scientists, users and representatives of civil society. Through a participatory approach, it is necessary to inform and involve more and more these groups to contribute to a truly multi-functional and sustainable management of these ecosystems. The QUALIGOUV project has been developed from this idea.

Depending on local context and priorities, the pilot activities undertaken by each partner on natural protected areas will focus on:

• wildfire prevention,
• welcoming the general public,
• forestry planning,
• management of biodiversity,
• development of new market opportunities such as wood-energy.

The method is based on the principle of a permanent and continuous sharing among the stakeholders of the pilot projects who practice them in the sight of all the partners (“communicoopération”).

The coordination, the animation and the capitalization will be set up through 3 methodological components:

• Establishment of a group of experts (peer group) composed of independent and competent persons responsible for the analysis of the pilot projects,
• AIFM’s intervention as an independent partner out of local projects to guide and drive the peer group’s reflection,
• Realisation of a qualitative assessment by an independent auditor at mid-term of the implementation of the project.

The purpose of the project is to stress the importance of a sustainable natural and cultural resources management, taking as the cornerstone the sustainable regional socio-economic development and specifying on sustainable tourism businesses. This project invites us to think about the creation of an integrated framework to effectively support and promote territorial level sustainable tourism initiatives and involving qualified tourism enterprises and local actors. It aims to develop and practice a coherent mechanism for rational planning and implementation of territorial initiatives for developing sustainable tourism businesses, for improving the corresponding products quality, competitiveness and marketability and for substantially contributing to sustainable regional socio-economic development and to preservation of natural and cultural assets. It emphasizes the collaboration and leading role of local actors of all related categories and to transnational networking and joint action.

The concept stands on the fact that, as shown by international practice, territorial scale sustainable development interventions:

• constitute parameters of vital importance for implementing socio-economic national and EU policies;
• presuppose strategies, policies and measures;
• can use sustainable tourism as a sound basis upon which economic development could be built, whilst effective strategies for sustainable natural and cultural resources’ management could be deployed.

The SUSTEN project addresses the corresponding needs through:

• focusing on sustainable tourism and its various forms, as well as on the improvement of competitiveness at products’ and territories’ levels;
• designing and establishing an integrated framework to effectively support and promote territorial level sustainable tourism initiatives and involving qualified tourism enterprises and local actors of all related categories;

• acting both locally and internationally for achieving significant added value from the knowledge and know–how point of view, as well as for achieving wide promotion of the territories and their assets targeted.