To effectively adapt to climate change (CC), a novel more dynamic approach in governing the oceans is needed. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) – a public process aimed to allocate human uses at sea while maintaining multiple ecosystem services (ES) – as currently implemented is too static to adequately incorporate climate refugia and CC responses of marine life. The goal of my project is to provide a stronger, more complete model for the sustainable planning of marine ES in the California Current. MEDIX will significantly improve the traditional MSP process in a context of a fast-changing climate by creating a novel approach to MSP that incorporates a dynamic ES assessment under CC scenarios with a sex-based analysis of CC effects on species and ecosystems, to elaborate a guideline for adaptation actions in MSP. The California Current will provide an ideal case study to test the new approach for adaptation strategies to maintain the ES.
Through the MSCA Global Fellowship, I will reinforce my expertise in ecosystem-based management in MSP with new interdisciplinary expertise and skills in ES modeling under CC and gendered innovations, which I will transfer back to Europe, where the development of adaptive strategies for MSP is relevant and timely. The GF envisages: i) an outgoing period at Stanford University, USA, where I will be involved in a major initiative to revise and adapt the marine protected areas network of the California Current within the national MSP initiative, in collaboration with governments, and ii) a return period at CNR, Italy, where I intend to build on and transfer the skills acquired to elaborate the adaptive MSP guidelines that I will make accessible to relevant European stakeholders through a process of science-to-policy and science-for-society engagement in the Mediterranean. At the end of my MSCA, CNR is expected to offer me a full-time research contract to enable me to continue expanding my research and taking its impact to further areas.