Our Work

An example of the most common beach in Boka Kotorska, Montenegro

Empowering Sustainable Biodiversity: Pro-Coast's Social Science-Led Initiative

The Pro-Coast consortium represents a truly interdisciplinary group of highly competent and experienced research teams composed specifically for the project. With 20 partners across 14 different countries, including nine partners engaging with local communities for case studies, our project is uniquely positioned to address the complex challenges of biodiversity conservation.

Key Contributions of Social Sciences:

As one of the pioneering initiatives integrating social sciences, Pro-Coast is committed to fostering collective action towards a healthier planet. Our conceptual framework highlights the crucial role of economic and social values in overcoming biodiversity loss, emphasizing the domain of the social sciences and humanities. Indeed, social scientists have already made major intellectual contributions in understanding nature's contributions to people, diverse cultural values placed on nature, and the transformative potential of individual behavioural changes. We now strive for:

Leveraging behavioural insights to drive sustainable transformation in coastal ecosystems.
Building trust and inclusivity by giving voice to all stakeholder groups, particularly those traditionally marginalized.
Empowering communities through interdisciplinary approaches, merging social science methodologies with conservation practices to achieve lasting environmental impact.

Comprehensive Approach:

Ecologists and modellers too have an important role to play, by providing knowledge and tools for adaptive management motivated by nature’s contributions to people. This will include building a community sustainability platform to exchange local data, which can aid central planning, with:

Tools to help citizens and communities gain local data on the health of nature; and
Tools from predictive modelling to guide actions which improve the health of nature.

By integrating social science methodologies with conservation practices, Pro-Coast aims to achieve meaningful and sustainable environmental impact, paving the way for a brighter future for coastal ecosystems.

Our Objectives

Gather and synthesize knowledge for informed citizen decisions.
Improve co-participation in community decision-making.
Integrate local knowledge and decisions into high-level policy-making.
Promote adaptive management and encourage the transformation of societies to enhance the resilience of coastal ecosystems.
Reverse biodiversity loss through similar transformative changes everywhere.