Environment/Climate: List of All New Projects Funded Under LIFE+

MEMO/11/524

Brussels, 19 July 2011

Environment/climate: list of all new projects funded under LIFE+

Austria- 3 projects (21.1 million)

LIFE+ Nature (3 projects – 21.1 million)

-Untere March-Auen (via donau – Österreichische Wasserstraßen-Gesellschaft mbH): The project's overall aim is to restore the Lower Moravia floodplains in the eastern part of Austria. Today the river bed is regulated, 36 oxbows to the river are cut off and 75% of the banks are reinforced. The project will restore floodplains and foster land-use practices that preserve biodiversity and endangered species and habitats.

-Netzwerk Donau (Verbund Austrian Hydro Power AG): The project aims to implement measuressuch asbypass branches, gravel structures and reconnecting existing or newly created habitats to improve the conservation status of habitats along the entirety of the Danube in Austria. A total of four Natura 2000 sites will benefit directly from the actions and all the Natura 2000 sites on the Danube in Austria will profit indirectly from the project as a whole.

-LIFE+ Lavant (Wasserverband Lavant):The project’s overall aim is to improve the number and size of the highly endangered small fish species populations in the river Lavant: the Danube gudgeon (Gobio uranocopus); Danube barbel (Barbus petenyi-Gr); Streber (Zingel streber); Danube roach (Rutilus virgo) and Danube whitefin gudgeon (Romanogobio vladykovi). Specifically, the project will target a significant enlargement of the existing Natura 2000 site and the restoration of important water and forest habitats found there, as well as improvements to the river continuum.

Belgium- 4 projects (20.5 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (2 projects – 11.1 million)

-AGICAL+ (AGC Glass Europe SA.): The AGICAL+ project proposes to implement an innovative solution, based on algae culture and biomass production, which will allow for the CO2 capture of lime or glass furnace fumes and the production of biofuel that can be used within the furnaces during the production process.Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.

-DEMETER (Flemish Land Agency / Vlaamse Landmaatschappij): The overall objective of the DEMETER project is to foster sustainable soil and nutrient management by guiding and informing farmers on management practices that consider both nutrient and soil organic matter management simultaneously. The project is centred on the principle that sustainable nutrient and soil organic matter management not only concerns fertilisation practices, but management of the whole farm.

LIFE+ Nature (1 project – 6.8 million)

-Ardenne liégeoise (Direction générale opérationnelle de l’Agriculture, des Ressources naturelles et de l’Environnement): This project aims to increase and improve the connectivity between peaty and wet habitats in the Ardennes plateau chain. It will complete the restoration of the network of wet habitats, started in 2002 within the framework of five LIFE projects and further reduce the risks associated with fragmentation. The project will tackle the degrading of sites from spruce plantation, the draining of soils and the recolonisation of areas by purple moor grass.

LIFE+ Biodiversity (1 project – 2.6 million)

-ELIA (ELIA System Operator S.A. - part of the Elia Group): The aim of the ELIA Biodiversity project is to demonstrate techniques for the creation and maintenance of ecological corridors under overhead power lines, allowing the maximisation of their potential benefits for biodiversity. Other expected benefits include: the preservation of the natural beauty of the landscape; improved attractiveness to tourists, hunters and local residents; greater acceptance by the general public of line infrastructure in the landscape; and a better public image for the transmission system operator.

Bulgaria - 2 projects (3.2 million)

LIFE+ Nature (2 projects - 3.2 million)

-BGNATURAGENEFUND (Forest Seed Control Station – Sofia): The project’s overall objective is to ensure the long-term conservation of priority forest habitats in Bulgaria, by establishing a gene bank for reproductive material and provision of plants for restoration. Specifically, the project will target an improvement in the conservation status of the two priority forest habitats of the Natura 2000 sites of Dragoman and Plana in western Bulgaria

-Return of the Neophron (Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds): This project will focus on improving the conservation status of the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) in Greece and Bulgaria. It will seek to secure the protection of the remaining pairs found in 15 Natura 2000 sites in Greece and in 12 sites in Bulgaria. These Special Protection Areas (SPAs) host 76-93% of the Greek and over 90% of the Bulgarian population of the species.

Cyprus- 4 projects (4.7 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (2 projects – 2.8 million)

-DAIRIUS (VIVARTIA Cyprus Ltd): The DAIRIUS project’s objective is to demonstrate an environmentally and financially sustainable solution for the management and treatment of returned Expired Dairy Products (EDP). It aims to achieve this through the development and testing of a two-phase anaerobic co-digestion process of EDP with other substrates and will assess the optimal physical, chemical and biochemical conditions for the anaerobic co-digestion process to maximise biogas yields.

-CYPADAPT (Ministry of Agriculture, Natural resources and Environment): The CYPADAPT project aims to develop a National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change in Cyprus in order to strengthen and increase the adaptive capacity of the country. The project will use modelling to provide insight into the likely future impacts of climate change on Cyprus and will identify the economic and social sectors that are particularly vulnerable to climate change today and in the future and assess their adaptive capacity.Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.

LIFE+ Nature (2 projects – 2 million)

-OROKLINI (Game Fund - Ministry of Interior): The project’s main objective is to bring the important bird species of the OrokliniLake site to favourable conservation status. Besides the two target species, the black-winged stilt and the spur-winged lapwing, four other species listed in Annex I of the EU Birds Directiveregularly nest or have nested at the site.

-JUNIPERCY (Department of Forests, Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment): The project’s primary aim is to promote and enable the long-term conservation of the endemic forests with Juniperus spp in Cyprus. Specifically, the project will contribute to the consolidation and dissemination of knowledge on the protection, restoration, monitoring and evaluation of this priority habitat in the country.

CzechRepublic - 2 projects (2.8 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (2 projects – 2.8 million)

-ReStEP (CzechUniversity of Life Sciences Prague): The main objective of the ReStEP project is to develop, test, evaluate and distribute to the public and business sectors in the CzechRepublic, a new, standardised methodology for the management of urban and regional planning in the field of proposals and assessments of energy projects. The method uses an innovative software tool – an interactive map of conditions for renewable and alternative energy sources including biofuels.Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.

-MEDETOX (Institute of Experimental Medicine AS CR): The MEDETOX project’s objective is to demonstrate innovative methods to assess the possible health risk connected with the exposure of the general public to diesel exhaust particles under real-life traffic conditions in the city of Prague. This project seeks to evaluate the toxicity of engine exhaust during operating conditions typical for core urban areas, where the engine emissions are of highest concern, as the aggregate dose is the highest. It will identify the health risks related to emerging fuels and fuel additives and monitor the effects of various policy decisions.

Denmark - 3 projects (9.5 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (1 project – 2 million)

-Plastic ZERO (Municipality of Copenhagen - The Technical and Environmental Administration Department): The objective of the Plastic ZERO project is to reduce the amount of plastic in waste streams, thereby saving non-renewable resources and enabling carbon neutral energy production from waste. It will do this by: establishing a road map for reducing plastic in waste streams, demonstrating measures for the prevention of plastic waste and technologies for sorting and recycling plastic waste.

LIFE+ Nature (2 projects – 7.5 million)

-SMOOTH (Tǿnder Kommune): This project targets the restoration of raised bog habitat, which is listed in Annex I of the Habitats Directive, and the management of the Annex II-listed European weatherfish (Misgurnus fossilis) within the Sølsted Mose habitat area in Denmark. The main objective is to contribute to the favourable conservation status of raised bog habitat through land purchase and other forms of compensation to private landowners, followed by conservation measures (improved hydrology, vegetation clearings, decreased nutrient availability) and the development of drained semi-natural Annex I-habitat types.

-Lille Vildmose (DanishForest and Nature Agency): The objective of the project is to restore the largest remaining raised bog in lowland northwest Europe, Lille Vildmose. The project will improve the conservation status of this priority habitat by facilitating re-growth of sphagnum moss and raising the water-table in areas of degraded raised bogs or in areas where peat has been excavated. These actions will result in a significant enlargement of the habitat area.

Estonia - 2 projects (2.8 million)

LIFE+ Information and Communication (1 project – 1.7 million)

-BaltInfoHaz (Baltic Environmental Forum Estonia): The overall goal of the BaltInfoHaz project is to initiate a stronger demand from society in the three Baltic States for products free of hazardous substances. The project aims to impact people's behaviour to encourage a shift from environmentally passive to active participation in environmental issues. The project also seeks to reduce the health impacts of hazardous substances by changing consumption patterns among pilot stakeholder groups.

LIFE+ Nature (1 project – 1.1 million)

-URBANCOWS (Environmental Board): The overall goal of the project is to improve the conservation status of the coastal meadow and costal lagoon habitats in Pärnu, as well as the species profile of these habitats. This will be achieved by managing Pärnu’s coastal habitats and raising awareness among local residents and visitors about the ecological value of the site.

Finland - 7 projects (17.8 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (4 projects – 8.7 million)

-Odourless casting (Uudenkaupungin Rautavalimo Oy): The aim of the ‘Odourless casting’ project is to address the problems related to the air pollution control of odorous and hazardous emissions from foundry processes. The goal is to define odorous and hazardous emissions in typical aluminium, steel and iron foundries and to demonstrate technically and economically feasible emission abatement techniques for wide-scale implementation.

-ARIT (Finnish Environment Institute): The ARIT project aims to establish a management system (MS) for managing the environmental risks, including ecological and health risks, caused by Finnish firing ranges, both active and disused. A risk assessment will be conducted for the prioritised sites in order to identify the magnitude, scale and targets of risk management actions. The most urgent site will be chosen for remediation and the results from the previous actions will be used to produce the management system.

-ASROCKS (Geological Survey of Finland): The main objective of the ASROCKS project is to provide guidelines for the exploitation of natural aggregate resources (crushed bedrock, sand and gravel) in an area with elevated arsenic concentrations in bedrock and soil. In addition, guidelines will be developed for re-use of aggregates in selected large construction areas with elevated arsenic concentration.

-LIFEdata (Forest Research Institute): The most important method for maintaining and improving natural resources and promoting their sustainability is to maintain, monitor and analyse the management alternatives, including the flora and fauna. Thus the LIFE-DATA project will develop and demonstrate a unique database system linking its integrated forest databases with those of other participating (LYNET) organisations. The data collected will be used to bridge the gap between data/information producers and users, enabling simple access to this integrated information.

LIFE+ Nature (2 projects – 8.8 million)

-NATNET (Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for Lapland): The project’s overall objective is to increase ecological connectivity and establish a green infrastructure that will improve the vitality and coherence of the Natura 2000 network in south-western Lapland and raise the biodiversity of the forests in the project area. A series of actions will target the species and habitats of Community importance within the project area, to improveand restore their conservation status or, in some cases, to maintain a 'favourable' conservation status.

-Species-rich LIFE (Natural Heritage Services of Metsähallitus): The overall objective of the “Species-rich LIFE” project is to improve the conservation status of 19 Annex I-listed habitats of the Habitats Directive whose overall conservation status in the boreal biogeographic region of Finland was assessed as ‘unfavourable-bad’ or ‘unfavourable-inadequate’ in the Finnish country report on the Habitats Directive. In total, the project will target 59 Natura 2000 network covering 466 951 ha.

LIFE+ Information and Communication (1 project – 0.4 million)

-Saimaan lohikalojen (Pohjois-Karjalan elinkeino-, liikenne-ja ympäristökeskus): The project’s general objective is to maintain the genetic diversity of the valuable salmon populations in LakeSaimaa and to improve their vitality with an information exchange and negotiation process that aims to promote sustainable fishing practices. The populations of various salmon species that live in the LakeSaimaa district require special attention and maintenance.

France - 8 projects (46.2 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (5 projects - 39.8 million)

-ICARRE 95 (Renault SAS): The LIFE project ICARRE 95 aims to demonstrate how to recycle 95% of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) at a regional scale - up to 30 000 ELVs per year - and to create a model that can be applied and exported to other sites and countries in France and Europe. After firstly outlining an effective process for dismantling the various parts of the recovered car, the beneficiary aims to develop a cradle-to-cradle process for recycling of non-ferrous metals, plastics, glass, foams, textiles and catalytic converters.

-URBAN LIGHT PLAN (Communauté Urbaine - Le Mans Métropole): The Urban Light Plan project aims to reduce light pollution from public lighting in the Le Mans area in France. The project intends to introduce more appropriate and ‘soft’ lighting, particularly seeking to replace lighting that does not currently meet the requirements of Energy Efficiency Certificates. It will also work to introduce more intelligent planning of lighting systems, not only significantly reducing the number of light points, but having lights switched off when not needed. It will thus also reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.

-HARMONICA (BRUITPARIF): The Harmonica project aims to show how an innovative, easy-to-understand, common noise index can contribute to efforts to tackle noise pollution. It seeks to combine as much noise information as possible into one portal to provide a harmonised framework for monitoring and evaluating noise pollution and the measures to reduce it. The project will harmonise the technical aspects of the use of noise monitoring systems and strategic noise maps and create a noise index based on the combination of information from these tools.

-R-URBAN (Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée): The R-URBAN project aims to demonstrate that networks of active citizens and associations can create alternative models of production and consumption through accelerated introduction of sustainable collective environmental practices that respond to the needs of modern cities in all of their social, cultural economic and environmental dimensions. It will implement a participative strategy to increase the ecological resilience of the town of Colombes - 83 000 inhabitants - in the north-western suburb of Paris (92).

-FO3REST (ACRI-ST SAS): The main objective of the FO3REST project is to refine the criteria and suggest validated thresholds for forest protection against ozone and climate change, in order to propose new standards that are more appropriate and based on the quantity of ozone absorbed by plants.Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.

LIFE+ Nature (2 projects – 4.4 million)

-LIFE Continuité écologique (Syndicat Mixte du Parc Naturel Régional du Morvan): The project objectives are based around four main axes: restoration works on degraded habitats; changes in agro-silvicultural practices along riverbanks; removing obstacles to improve connectivity; and awareness-raising. This project applies at the catchment area level the experience acquired from a previous project, LIFE04 NAT/FR/000082 "Headwater streams and associated faunistic heritage".

-LIFE+ Râle des genets (Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux): The project’s main objective is to implement actions urgently required in order to conserve and restore the French breeding population of the corncrake and the maintenance of its habitats. Specific actions will include acquisition of suitable grassland areas; implementation of concrete management and restoration actions; protection of breeding and fledgling birds; proposal of improvements to agri-environmental measures to make them more attractive to farmers; and raising awareness of the corncrake among all stakeholders.

LIFE+ Biodiversity (1 project – 1.9 million)

-SUBLIMO (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique): The SUBLIMO project proposes a new approach to analysing, monitoring and reducing the loss of marine biodiversity. It will seek to identify and estimate the abundance of coastal fish species that return to colonise coastal habitats and renew the local population. It will capture small post-larvae that have a low survival rate, rear them in aquaria and release them once they have grown to a size where their survival rate is significantly improved. The project will thus analyse and reinforce biodiversity at the fish post-larvae stage.

Germany- 10 projects (66.3 million)

LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance (2 projects - 21.6 million)

-Alternative Biomass 4 Energy (European Institute for Energy Research): This project will investigate a new approach for converting digests from biogas plants and biowaste into biochar. At the same time, the possible impacts on crop growth, cropping systems, and other impacts will be investigated. The main emphasis will be on demonstrating at pilot scale, a new carbonisation technology (BSP) for the conversion of different sources of waste and digests. This will then be put back into the biomass cropping systems and/or used for energy purposes.Direct or indirect relevance to climate change.