Actions for Climate Transition by developing Future Aquaculture Strategies and Technologies
Abstact:
ActFast aims to identify, validate, and demonstrate climate change adaptation and mitigation solutions tailored for European aquaculture, alongside opportunities to increase sustainable production. Targeting regions where aquaculture is deeply integrated into the socio-economic fabric, the project will map climate hazards across the Mediterranean Sea, Deltas, Central-Eastern European inland waters, and North-East Atlantic Ocean, utilizing historical data, predictions, stakeholder insights, and satellite surveys.
Integrating this comprehensive data analysis, the project will develop a user-friendly early warning system for the Mediterranean region empowering aquafarmers to proactively manage and mitigate climate risks. ActFast will promote the development of fast and replicable climate solutions for marine, transitional, and freshwater aquaculture by integrating climate prediction models with targeted solutions in four target regions.
Given the unique impacts and sensitivities of the targeted areas and aquaculture systems, ActFast aims to design mitigation strategies that consider both regional and species-specific characteristics, boosting the productive efficiency, health, and well-being of farmed fish and mollusks struggling against climate change’s impacts, increasing and diversifying production in coastal and rural areas, promoting economic growth and community resilience, and minimizing environmental impact and shrinking European aquaculture’s carbon footprint.
The proposed innovations will be shared through an inclusive dissemination and communication plan, while the market uptake of the results and outputs will be ensured by a detailed exploitation strategy. To achieve maximum exploitation, dissemination, and knowledge transfer, ActFast will develop and implement a “Virtual ActFast Lighthouse”, an immersive demo-training virtual reality collecting data from diverse experiments and field operations conducted across multiple work packages.
Leitat’s role in the project:
- Leader of WP6 on Sustainability and circularity under a life cycle perspective.
- Evaluation of environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability through LCA, sLCA and LCC to demonstrate the best solutions for the sustainability and competitiveness of aquaculture under a cradle-to-farm gate perspective.
- Definition of circularity assessment framework for new aquaculture systems.
Project Budget: 5.060.047,50€
Financial Framework: Horizon Europe
Start Date: 01/07/2025
Leitat Budget: 120.715,50€
Contract Number: 101181159
End Date: 31/05/2029
Partners:
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101181159. Funded by the European Union.
