Despite the efforts undertaken locally to preserve and enhance protected areas and Natura 2000 sites, waste accumulates uncontrollably due to increased visitors, polluting the terrestrial (green area) and the aquatic environment (blue area). Waste such as that carried by rivers and generated by coastal tourism often ends up in the Adriatic Sea, an area shared by the two countries involved in the project, Italy and Croatia.

WASTEREDUCE will address these critical issues by developing, testing and implementing a new integrated, participatory and holistic approach that addresses waste management from different perspectives, favouring action at the landscape-level approach. The approach will follow the impact mitigation hierarchy, working on four levels to achieve integrated waste management: measure, avoid/prevent, reduce and mitigate the impact of waste. The four levels will integrate the governance, socio-economic, technological and cultural domains to achieve the expected results, harnessing the different competencies of the project partners: local and regional authorities, managers of protected areas and Natura 2000 sites, academic institutions, private individuals and sectoral NGOs.

Etifor’s role in the project will be to organise and implement a two-stage acceleration process for local actors wishing to test their innovative ideas to create new financing methods for nature. We will select the best cases across Europe and offer them in-depth training and a programme of locally supported activities where they can develop, test and establish their local payment system for ecosystem services.

• Project poster