Aether – Alliance for the Effective Transnational Handling of Environmental Resources

The project involves an integrated effort of most of the institutional and scientific community working on marine, coastal and maritime issues. The project covers different coastal, marine and mainland areas: Puglia Region: “Inner Sea” of Taranto; the East coast of Salento in the marine protected area of Otranto-S.Maria di Leuca; •          Western Greece Region: regional Units of Ilia and Achaia including the coastal and marine area expanding within the Ionion Sea; •          Epirus Region: Siagiada coastline in R.U of Thesprotia; •          Ionian Islands Region: three Regional Units of Corfu and Zakynthos. The Project will be based on three main phases: 1.Sharing of environmental assessment and co-planning and co-management of joint plans and protocols; 2.Networking and ITC tools; 3.Implementation of Pilot projects. The project starts from the elaboration of the mapping and analyses of the areas concerned in order to assess the environmental risks, the prevention measures and subsequent population alerting phase, with reference to the evaluated risks, which will produce effect on health, on products quality and consequently on social and community life. In the first phase the partnership will establish a joint governance and management of Plans integrating coastal and rural ecosystems protection measures and enhancing marine, coastal and mainland resources, thus enabling a integrated territorial productive system (rural and sea value chain) to strengthen environmental, social and economic sustainability. In particular, PPs will develop joint mapping - environmental risk assessment; ecosystem services management model; joint Protocol for monitoring landslides; Civil Protection Green Paper on environmental emergencies. During the second phase, PB1 will, first of all, adapt and restructure infrastructural assets necessary to strengthen cooperation activities and measures among PPs. Finally, PPs will implement pilot projects with an overall strategy encompassing clearly defined targets and measures which aim at protecting the territory of the target areas from pollution and natural risks, suggesting and elaborating potential alerting and remediation strategies and thus enabling to move towards more protected and sustainable productive systems at environmental, economic and social level.