The proposals presented by the researchers Verónica Relano “SOS2030” on the preservation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and by Ana Arias “FORESEEN” focused on the sustainable and circular evaluation of biofuels, have just achieved the support of the European Commission through the Marie Sklodowska-Curie (MSCA) – Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 program.
SOS2030. Towards the 2030 conservation targets in Europe: An assessment of Management Gaps and Opportunities in Marine Protected Areas, is an initiative aligned with the EU Biodiversity Strategy, which seeks to protect 30% of European oceans by 2030. With this proposal, researcher Verónica Relano aims to improve the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Europe, since many of them only exist on paper without meeting conservation objectives, which turns them into “paper parks”. For the first time, the common patterns of these paper parks will be comprehensively analysed, providing key tools and lessons to prevent their creation in the future and improve the sustainability of coastal communities in Europe and around the world. To this end, a database, an assessment tool, a multilingual documentary, a website and newspaper articles will be developed.
The MSCA grant in the European Postdoctoral Fellowships category will allow Verónica Relano to join CRETUS within the team led by PI Sebastián Villasante, to develop her project that has achieved 98.80 points out of 100 in the final assessment.
FORESEEN. Fostering the transitiOn foR sustainablE and circular bio-fuelS: an Eco-labEl and moNitoring tool as a guidance for policies, is the initiative presented by CRETUS researcher Ana Arias whose objective is to design, implement and validate a digitalised toolkit and an eco-label aimed at improving and ensuring compliance with decarbonization strategies, policies and regulations to promote sustainable and circular biofuel technologies and value chains..
To carry out this project, scored 99.4 out of 100, Ana Arias will join Imperial College London (United Kingdom) in the team of Prof. Evina Katsou of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
With these achievements, CRETUS contributes to the extraordinary result achieved by the USC in attracting Marie Curie talent (5 grants), placing it among the first national institutions with the greatest success in this call.
