Project Status - Active
Start Year: 2010
End Year: 2012
Funding Body: INTERREG IVC

Geographic Area: Europe
Local Study Area: Cork

Project Co-Ordinator: Alan Pickaver – EUCC
CMRC Contact: Cathal O’Mahony

Website: http://www.sustain-eu.net

Abstract

The increasing intensity of human activities along our coastline (e.g. the development of ports and harbours, coastal protection, land reclamation, tourism and sand/gravel extraction) has a severe impact on coastal communities and natural habitats. The EC has adopted a renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy which aims to bring about a high level of environmental protection, social equity and cohesion, economic prosperity and active promotion of sustainable development worldwide. There are multiple inter-linkages between the key challenges: for example between the use of renewable energy and climate change.

The key objective of SUSTAIN is to have in place, at the end of three years, a fully implementable policy tool, applicable for all 22 coastal states of the EU, which will ensure that the integrated management of coastal issues will be sustainable. This entails the agreement within the project, of a set of criteria which are readily measurable and which cover both the threats of an unsustainable development and the opportunities provided by a sustainable future which faces all coastal authorities and communities throughout Europe.

The SUSTAIN project partnership comprises 13 partners (including authorities [regional and local], universities and NGOs); and the project is pan-European in scope with partners representing the N. Atlantic and S. Atlantic seaboards, the Mediterranean, Baltic and Black Seas.