MaREI, University College Cork, Ireland
Since the beginning of the project, Marine SABRES representatives have been active carrying out one of its key coordination tasks - the creation of a collaboration plan for the enhancement of collaborative activities with other research projects that examine similar topics or use similar approaches. This work aims at maximizing knowledge and experience sharing and optimising the use of resources when projects work on same locations and/or with similar data, stakeholders as well as wider audiences.
In this article, we will briefly describe how we’ve been combining or planning to combine efforts with other amazing projects that work on socio-ecological systems, marine biodiversity, ocean governance, marine spatial planning, nature conservation, nature-based solutions and more.
Marine SABRES is included in the All-Atlantic Cooperation for Ocean Research and Innovation (AANChOR) sister project list and as a result, we have had the opportunity to participate in meetings, information sessions and updates organised by AANChoR. This is a good basis to start connecting with other projects that have as a common location the Atlantic Ocean.
We participated in a dedicated session of the 2nd FutureMares annual meeting and have been considering which other sister projects might work well together. Those include ACTNOW, BIOcean5D, Blue4All, CLIMAREST, GES4SEAS, Invest4Nature (I4N), MaCoBioS, MARBEFES, MarinePlan, Mission Atlantic, MPA Europe, MSP4BIO, OBAMA-NEXT, REST-COAST. This discussion is expected to continue and will include a dedicated workshop (or series of them) to discuss and define concrete ways that some of these projects might work together. Now that we are entering our second year, we’ve been discussing collaboration ideas with GES4SEAS, ACTNOW, BIOCEAN5D, OBAMA-NEXT and MARBEFES. Possibilities include organising a common activity such as a workshop, conference session in an international impactful event and/or a special session in a high impact open access journal. These discussions will continue in the Autumn when the best approach will be decided.
One other exciting activity is our participation in the NetworkNature and the upcoming NatureNatwork+ which is a resource for the Nature-based Solutions (NbS) community, creating opportunities for local, regional and international cooperation to maximise the impact and spread of nature-based solutions. We are part of various task forces and participate in the project board meetings. This gives us the opportunity to highlight the NbS and Climate Adaptation aspect of Marine SABRES and to connect with other projects focused on marine and coastal NbS, thus expanding possible collaborative activities on this topic.