The Biodiversity and Environment Institute of the University will participate in a project to achieve adaptation to Climate Change in the Pyrenees.

The Biodiversity and Environment Institute of the University of Navarra will participate, together with 46 other Spanish, French and Andorran entities, in the project PYRENEES4CLIMA, to achieve adaptation to Climate Change in the Pyrenees. This project, which has been C by the European LIFE Program, will start in October 2023 and will run until December 2030, and will be led by the Community of work of the Pyrenees (CTP), through the Pyrenean Observatory of Climate Change (OPCC).

The project graduate "PYRENEES4CLIMA: Towards a climate-resilient cross-border mountain community in the Pyrenees" has a budget of 19,518,018 € budget of which 11,710,810.80 € (60% of the overall budget ) is subsidized by the European Union while the rest is provided by the partners of project.

The goal of this project is to implement the Pyrenees Climate Change Strategy (EPiCC), the first European climate change strategy specifically designed for a mountain and cross-border bioregion, which aims to make the Pyrenees resilient to the effects of climate change by 2050. The seven member territories of the CTP: Nouvelle Aquitaine, Occitanie, Euskadi, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia and Andorra actively participated in the design of this strategy.

On behalf of Biodiversity and Environment Institute, researchers David Elustondo, Carolina Santamaría, Esther Lasheras, Enrique Baquero, Rafael Miranda, Arturo Ariño, David Galicia and Jesús Miguel Santamaría are participating. Their activities will focus mainly on analyzing air quality in different areas of the Pyrenees, determining the impact of pollutants on health and ecosystems in baseline situations and during pollution episodes and extreme weather events. Likewise, the vulnerability and resilience of iconic Pyrenean elements, such as peatlands, will be investigated, studying their trophic status, hydrological functioning, role in greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and carbon sequestration.

PYRENEES4CLIMA provides a medium-term vision deadline necessary to address climate change issues, and will become a real accelerator of climate action policies in the Pyrenees by giving continuity to the points core topic identified in the EPiCC strategy itself.

The LIFE Program is the only financial instrument of the European Union dedicated exclusively to the environment and climate action and is one of the main contributors to the European Green Pact. The project PYRENEES4CLIMA responds to the Strategic Integrated Projects (SIP) program aimed at supporting the monitoring, development and implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The Biodiversity and Environment Institute of the University of Navarra is a research center that aims to respond, based on scientific evidence, to the main environmental challenges facing the planet. The Institute is formed by more than fifty researchers working in four main areas: management of ecosystems, anthropogenic impacts, global change and biodiversity, and science communication.