"Building resilience is at the core of ENSERES" comments Christoph Schröder, project manager at ETC-UMA . In the last decades, anthropic pressures intensified in the Mediterranean basin are eroding the coastal environment and the ecosystem services it provides. A rapid and coordinated intervention, based on integrated governance new models capable of developing and protecting a reconstituted harmony between man and environment, where nature and humans needs coexist and are resilient to global changes, is needed.

The ENSERES project is coordinated by The European Topic Centre for Spatial Analysis and Synthesis (ETC-UMA), an international research centre based at the University of Malaga since 2010. ETC-UMA will be directing for two years the activities and strong interactions of six partners and more than 20 associated institutions operating throughout the Mediterranean. Public authorities, socio-economic actors and civil society organisations will be involved in the process of transferring and mainstreaming the innovative management tools necessary to implement the Integrated Coastal Management (ICZM) models. ETC-UMA coordinates the project’s communication, making sure that processes and actions by the partners achieve a coherent synthesis, both at operational and at communicative levels.

For more than 10 years ETC-UMA has been working around its core mission, developing the environmental knowledge that constitutes the basis of any policy based on scientific evidence. The Spanish institution is presently composed by a team of international professionals; biologists, ecological modellers, geographers, GIS experts, economists and IT programmers work to gather and harmonise in a rational analysis the data and knowledge that decision-makers need.

The Malaga research group is part of the European Topic Centres supporting the European Environment Agency (EEA), and since 2016 leads the Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Community (MBPC), a family of more than 300 institutions focused on reducing pressures on biodiversity. Within ENSERES, ETC-UMA will also take care of guiding and put into effect the positive outcomes to the Mediterranean Biodiversity Protection Knowledge Platform. The Spanish institution has supported among others the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), committed to building the capacity of countries in the development of indicators to assess their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  All these experiences have been successfully utilized in projects such as SWOS (H2020), Interplace (ESPON) and Cop.Hub AC (H2020).

ENSERES (ENhancing Socio-Ecological RESilience in Mediterranean coastal areas) is funded by the European Union under the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation program ENI CBC Med.