MarCons: Advancing marine conservation in the European and contiguous seas

Marine biodiversity in the European Seas is under threat due to the intensity of cumulative human impacts. Despite the high-level goals to halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services by 2020, there are no signs of improved trends in the state of biodiversity. Most services derived from marine and coastal ecosystems are being used unsustainably and therefore marine ecosystems are deteriorating faster than other ecosystems. The challenges of biodiversity conservation and sustainability of ecosystem services are further complicated by climate change, which is expected to decrease the effectiveness of current-state-of-the-art marine management measures by inducing range shifts and biodiversity reshuffling and favouring biological invasions. This Cost Action will consolidate a network of scientists and stakeholders who are involved in marine conservation in European and contiguous seas, promote collaboration, reduce redundancy of research efforts in conservation science and practice, make significant progress beyond the state-of-the-art by developing and promoting novel and relevant concepts, methods, and tools, provide support to the related European policies, and enable effective and informed decision-making for the improvement of marine conservation in the European Seas and adjacent regions. By advancing the science of integrated conservation planning, promoting regional coordination and transboundary conservation, proposing specific conservation actions, accounting for climatic change and biological invasions, and providing guidance for assessing governance issues to make marine spatially managed areas more effective, this Cost Action aims to bridge the gap between conservation science and policy makers and substantially contribute to the challenge of halting biodiversity loss in the European Seas by 2020.

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