INSPIRI

Program: HORIZON-MISS-2024-OCEAN-01-05

Project title: Imaginative Narratives and Scenarios for Inspiring Restoration and Innovation for European Seas and Water Systems

Acronym: INSPIRI

Duration: 01/09/2025 – 31/08/2028

Project budget: € 2.995.413,75

ISMAR budget: € 191.531,25

Web site: n.a.

Summary:

Progress toward the European Green Deal, the Mission Restore Our Ocean and Waters, and related EU climate, biodiversity, and pollution targets is hindered by governance barriers such as mistrust among decision-makers, lack of public support, and modest policy action. The INSPIRI project will contribute to overcoming these challenges by building on creative participatory methods. The inclusive INSPIRI consortium will innovate by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders to imagine aspirational futures for EU waters using the Nature Futures Framework. Through case studies across the four Mission Lighthouse regions, we will co-create visions of desirable futures for ocean and water systems with stakeholders. Aligned with key EU strategic objectives and targets, these will become goals for back-casting and modelling regional scenarios. The outputs from both visioning and modelling exercises will serve as inputs into regional Transformation Labs that bring together decision-makers, policy-makers, experts and other stakeholders from the Lighthouse regions to chart actions towards implementing sustainable futures for EU waters. We will develop innovative scientific and artistic visualizations in each case study as well as at the pan-European level for both 2030 and 2050 time horizons. Finally, through a creative, multi-layered communication, dissemination, and exploitation strategy, leveraging the full potential of art-science collaboration for motivating change, we will inspire key target groups to take meaningful action. The INSPIRI consortium, collaborating closely with the Mission Lighthouses and governance structures, brings together world-class expertise in stakeholder engagement, visioning, modelling, policy analysis, and art-science collaborations to ensure we can deliver on the ambitious work plan. CNR, together with the University of Santiago de Compostela, co-leads WP4 “Actioning visions through policy” and contributes to the Mediterranean case study.

Contact person in ISMAR: emiliano.ramieri@cnr.it

Partnership:

1. Science and Research Centre Koper (Slovenia)
2. Stockholm University (Sweden)
3. University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
4. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria)
5. National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (France)
6. National Research Council  (Italy)
7. Planethon Ab (Sweden)
8. National Center for Scientific Research (France)
9. WWF Romania (Romania)