WPs

MARBEFES is structured around eight WPs implementing Tasks instrumental in meeting the project objectives:

WP1 (Stakeholder involvement and governance rules) will inventory the views of stakeholders regarding perceptions of the social ecological systems of BBTs, present needs and future requirements and rules and regulations on biodiversity and ecosystems services in BBTs. It will also engage stakeholders to contribute to the tasks, and to test and evaluate project outputs in a series of workshops.

WP2 (Broad-belt transects across European seascapes) will establish the BBTs be used as test areas for a toolbox of integrated biodiversity, ecological and socio-economic assessment.

WP3 (Biodiversity and ecosystem tools) will develop:

• tools to assess ecosystem biodiversity, structure, function and ecosystem services, to enable prediction of the impacts of human pressures, future environmental scenarios and management actions and
• indicators and methods to better monitor seascape biodiversity and function.  

WP4 (Ecological, social and economic valuation) will develop and apply a handbook for ecological and economic valuation of biodiversity, ecosystem services and societal goods and benefits.

WP5 (Integration and scenarios) will adopt climatic and socio-economic scenarios to project future trends and assess their possible impacts, will integrate BBT data to synthesise large-scale patterns and will analyse knowledge gaps emerging from synthesis to allow for supplementary tests at BBTs.

WP6 (Upscaling and outscaling outputs for governance and stakeholders) will upscale the project outputs to provide a set of customized guidance and a Marine Biodiversity and Valuation Toolbox targeted to emerging needs, and pilot test the tools in two broader geographies (the Black Sea and Antilles (Martinique)).

WP7 (Project coordination and outreach) is a cross-cutting and coordinates the MARBEFES activities and manages its resources. It ensures smooth running of the project, timely submission of Deliverables and Milestones, communication within and outside of the project, financial management, quality assurance, data and risk management, ocean literacy and outreach activities.

WP7 is the interface of the project with the outside world. The interrelationships of the WPs are demonstrated in the Pert Diagram.

Detailed description of each workpackage below!

8 working packages

The objectives of MARBEFES are to: 

• Characterise marine biodiversity in selected areas in Europe and understand the links between ecological structure and functioning across biological organisation levels from the molecular, individual and population to the community and ecosystem;
• Establish biodiversity-ecosystem functioning-ecosystem service links for focal habitats and selected important or iconic species in a range of ecological and socio-economic contexts;
• Capture ecological value related to the fragility, connectivity, uniqueness, irreplaceability and vulnerability of selected genes, species, habitats and ecosystems;  
• Demonstrate how different European coastal ecosystems provide services, and societal goods and benefits, including cultural value, and clarify how this provision is dependent on healthy biodiversity;  
• Use natural capital accounting to determine the value of ecosystem services, societal goods and benefits;  
• Recommend how management interventions should be directed and addressed to maximise the ecological value and optimise the economic value of the marine system;  
• Inform action to meet the major global and European societal and marine management and governance demands; 
• Foster biodiversity and human well-being by creating a toolbox for biodiversity and ecosystem valuation to support international and EU-level policy and decision making.  
  

The project innovatively combines perspectives from a range of scales and dimensions: Firstly, for policy/management from the global (e.g. IPBES) to local communities by co-development with stakeholders; secondly at the ecological/natural science levels of biological organisation from the cell (molecular and genetic techniques) and individuals to populations, communities and ecosystems. Thirdly, on spatial changes from the coast and transitional waters, across the shelf; Finally, on temporal changes in biodiversity, function and their production of ecosystem services thereby covering seasonal, annual and long term with climate change (with built in long-term scenario testing).

These latter two have to be combined to give spatio-temporal scales of variability and within this the scenarios of ecosystem structure and functioning change in relation to the ecosystem services and societal goods and benefits. Lastly, we will jointly assess the scales of environmental and anthropogenic (including socio-economic variables and scenarios) variability.

MARBEFES has an underlying conceptual basis related to a healthy ecosystem for both nature and society, and which we define as being fit-for-purpose of maintaining and promoting nature conservation while at the same time delivering ecosystem services from which we obtain societal goods and benefits3.

In essence, the assurance and delivery of human welfare and economic wellbeing relies on the environment, whether air, land or sea, being able to provide societal goods and benefits, particularly basic human needs such as food, clean water, shelter, employment, recreational potential.

MARBEFES defines diversity and biodiversity at its widest in relation to the state of the natural environmental and the delivery of societal gains and outcomes. This involves societal diversity and environmental economic diversity before moving to the ecological features of habitat diversity, functional community biodiversity, structural (taxonomic) community biodiversity. Those communities are then composed of population biodiversity, individual physiological biodiversity and genetic biodiversity.

Each of these types can be valued in monetary and non-monetary terms but this has not previously been achieved at the scales proposed here. MARBEFES has a high relevance to global initiatives such as IPBES, World Oceans Assessment II, G7 Future of Oceans & Seas Initiative, Decades of Ocean Science for Sustainability and of Ecosystem Restoration, SDGs (SDG14 and others), UNEP GEMS Oceans, Global Taxonomic Initiative and others. Regionally it will help to fulfil the aims of key European governance and management initiatives, particularly the European Green Deal, Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the MSFD.

Participants will input into these through a common membership. Most importantly, it uses a multi-actor approach and co-development with stakeholders to define the policy, management and governance questions requiring the ecological and socio-economic questions.  

In particular, MARBEFES uses sound science and a solid conceptual and theoretical background in the natural and social sciences supplemented by field and model testing of the following primary and innovative research questions:   

• Are there direct correlations between the complexity and amount of ecological structure and functioning with the monetary and non-monetary value of ecosystem services and societal goods and benefits?
• Which level of biological organisation is primarily responsible for which ecosystem service and hence the dominant factor in ecological and economic valuation, monetary and non-monetary terms?
• How valid and accurate is the valuation of ecosystem services using habitat size and population size as proxies and can ecological valuation be linked to socio-economic valuation?
• To what extent can ecosystem services be translated into societal goods and benefits relevant to stakeholders and end-users?