HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-02-03 – Atlantic and Arctic basin lighthouse – restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems and increased climate resilience

CLIMAREST

General Information

Opening date

25 June 2024

Deadline model

single-stage

Deadline dates

27 August 2024 17:00 (Brussels time)

Open For Submission

Expected duration of participation

20 months

Total funding available

80 000,00 €


Project acronym

CLIMAREST

Full name of the EU funded project

Coastal Climate Resilience and Marine Restoration Tools for the Arctic Atlantic basin

Grant agreement number

101093865

Topic

HORIZON-MISS-2021-OCEAN-02-03 – Atlantic and Arctic basin lighthouse – restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems and increased climate resilience

Submission & evaluation process

We are pleased to announce the launch of a call for associated regions to participate in the CLIMAREST project. We are looking for the active involvement of one associated region (replication site) during the demonstration period (2024-2025) and after the project end to showcase the feasibility of the CLIMAREST solutions demonstrated in Svalbard and to prepare for implementation and scale up of the tested tools and technologies in the associated region.

The objective of the call is to facilitate the replication of demonstrated solutions for marine restoration in associated regions in new projects after CLIMAREST is finished (2026-2030). Suitable associated regions are the those with similar challenges and needs for restoration and climate-resilience measures as the CLIMAREST demonstration area in Svalbard (read more here: https://climarest.eu/demo-1). Organizations in the following countries are eligible to apply Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and United Kingdom. Third parties from the associated regions are expected to take part in the preparation of replication blueprints and business roadmaps for replication in their region based on the experiences in the CLIMAREST demonstration case.

Applications are submitted in the FundingBox platform found here: https://climarest-3rd-oc.fundingbox.com/

GUIDE FOR APPLICANTS

Eligible beneficiaries for this call are local and/or regional organizations from Member States, overseas and associated countries to the Horizon Europe Programme. Only local and/or regional authorities are eligible to receive the funding and will be the contracted party, but the consortium can have several partners.

We aim to select one associate region as a replication site for each of the five habitats restored in the demonstration phase of the project: seagrass meadows, Arctic oligotrophic coastal areas, shallow water rocky bottoms, oyster reefs, and soft bed benthic habitats. In the first and second rounds we selected four projects covering seagrass meadows, oyster reefs, shallow water rocky bottom and soft bed benthic habitats. In this third round we are specifically looking for one project to replicate the solutions for mitigation of coastal erosion and wastewater pollution developed in the CLIMAREST Arctic oligotrophic coastal demonstration area (Svalbard). Please note that countries that are part of the CLIMAREST consortium cannot receive funding: Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain.

Applicants should have a good command of English, must be eligible for participation in the EC Horizon Europe Framework Programme and must ensure the following obligations of the Grant Agreement, namely Articles 12 (conflict of interest), 13 (confidentiality and security), 14 (ethics), 17.2 (visibility), 18 (specific rules for carrying out action), 19 (information) and 20 (record-keeping).

The selected beneficiaries commit to carrying out the following activities in their role as an associated region to the CLIMAREST project:

  1. Participation in workshops and meetings for knowledge transfer during CLIMAREST.
  2. Participation in developing blueprints and business roadmaps for the replication sites.
  3. Pilot testing the innovations developed in the project.
  4. Interact with local stakeholders to identify restoration needs in the replication area.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Call opening: June 25th 2024

Call closing date: August 27th 2024

Single stage submission

Submission through the online platform at FundingBox only

English language

Budget in EURO

TIMELINE

Evaluation and selection: August/September

Granting completed: Estimated September 30th 2024

Project implementation: From November 1st 2024

Project end: November 30th 2025

FUNDING & ELIGIBILITY

Each associated region can apply for up to €80.000 in grants. Specified costs need to be used to prepare for the replication of given methods and technologies in the region as described above. Eligible direct costs: travel to workshops and meetings, direct costs for hosting local workshops, information material.

Admissibility and Eligibility check

  1. Submission system: Proposals need to be submitted through the Open Call management tool [www.fundingbox.com]. Proposals submitted by any other means, will not be admitted.
  2. Deadline: Proposals need to be submitted before August 27th, 2024. Applications must be submitted by the closing time and date of the open call. The time recorded by the FundingBox Platform, as submission time of the proposal, will be the official one. Late proposals will not be accepted.
  3. English language. English is the official language for the open calls. The proposal must be in English in all its mandatory parts in order to be admitted.

Additionally, proposals received will be checked against the Eligibility Check Criteria:

  1. Type of Activity and Scope
  2. Type of organization
  3. Established in an EU Member State, EU Overseas Countries and Territories or Associated Country other than consortium partner countries that are eligible for Horizon Europe funding (as described above)

The eligibility criteria are checked against the self-declarations included in the application form. Later on, during the evaluation process, the above criteria will be verified, and if an applicant is not compliant with any of them, the application will be excluded.

Evaluation

Each proposal will be evaluated by one independent and one internal expert appointed according to the specific characteristics of the applicants from the pool of External Experts. The external experts will be independent from the applicants and cannot be Consortium partners employees, permanent collaborators nor board members. External experts must ratify the Confidentiality Statement and the ‘Non-conflict of interests’ before starting the evaluations.

  1. EXCELLENCE will evaluate how the applicants propose to use the CLIMAREST restoration solutions in the respective replication area.
  2. IMPACT will analyse the overall expected impact of the upscaling of restoration measures in the given region in the short and long term.
  3. IMPLEMENTATION will consider the application’s description of plans for interaction with the CLIMAREST consortium, knowledge-sharing and participation in the development of blueprints for upscaling of the suggested methods and technology. It will also consider the likelihood of successful upscaling in the given region based on the elaboration on local barriers and mitigations given by the applicants.

The consensus meeting will include the Third-Party Management Board (TPMB) of CLIMAREST and the independent experts who evaluated the proposals as well as the CLIMAREST ethics representative. The consensus meeting will decide on a list of third parties that will receive funding based on the ranking list from the evaluation. Whilst normally the highest ranked proposals will be selected for funding, the TPMB might have fair reasons for objecting to a specific third-party project, such as the alignment with CLIMAREST goals and scope, the ability to achieve the highest impact possible, as well as the existence of significant ethical concerns or a potential conflict of interest. In this case, the choice may pass to the next-ranked proposal. One proposal will be approved per restoration type; however, this call is focused only on the replication of CLIMAREST solutions demonstrated in the Svalbard Arctic oligotrophic coastal area. The European Commission must approve the list of projects receiving funding before the name and locality of the awarded applicants will be made publicly available through the CLIMAREST web site and the call platform.

PRIVACY

Personal data that will be collected, processed and published in accordance with Regulation

(EU) 2016/679, also known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

CONTACT

Arctic demo leader: Hanne Kvitsand, SINTEF Community hanne.kvitsand@sintef.no

CLIMAREST admin team: climarest.eu@gmail.com

CLIMAREST Coordinator: Ida Beathe Øverjordet, SINTEF Ocean, NorwayShow less

Further information

Task description

The selected beneficiaries commit to carrying out the following activities in their role as an associated region to the CLIMAREST project:

  1. Participation in workshops and meetings for knowledge transfer during CLIMAREST.
  2. Participation in developing blueprints and business roadmaps for the replication sites.
  3. Pilot testing the innovations developed in the project.
  4. Interact with local stakeholders to identify restoration needs in the replication area.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

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