IHCantabria will contribute to the design of policies and future strategic plans of the Interreg Atlantic program, through the European GRAAL project

This project offers to strengthen governance and analyze the impact of Interreg projects in 5 thematic areas: environmental conservation, climate change adaptation and risk management, marine energy, ocean pollution and sustainable tourism

The Environmental Hydraulics Institute de la Universidad de Cantabria (IHCantabria) has started its work in the European project GRAAL(Governance and Regional Atlantic Area Lighthouse), whose main objective is to increase the impact of the Interreg Atlantic Area program in its key objectives, such as environmental protection, adaptation to climate change and sustainability.

This project involves a consortium of more than 25 partners from Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal. The project is scheduled to run from September of this year until June 2026 and has a total budget of more than four million euros.

GRAAL will focus on five thematic areas: environmental conservation, climate change adaptation and risk management, marine energy, ocean pollution, and sustainable tourism. In a cross-cutting manner, this project will also address digitalization and innovation, the circular economy and governance, as fundamental pillars to ensure coherence between policies and the sustainability of actions in the long term.

Official GRAAL presentations in Portugal and Belgium

The official kick-off meeting of the GRAAL project (kick of meeting) was held on September 10 and 11 in Brest, France, at the facilities of the Center for Studies and Expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility and Urbanism (CEREMA). This meeting was attended by María Merino and María Recio, as researchers of the GRAAL project in IHCantabria.

Two other events are also scheduled for the official presentation of the GRAAL project, one in Oporto (Portugal) on September 30, and the other in Brussels (Belgium) during the European Week of Regions and Cities in mid-October.

IHCantabria will lead the work package related to the “Policy Lab”.

Within the European GRAAL project, IHCantabria will lead theWork Package called “Policy Lab“, an initiative that will be implemented in different regions of the Atlantic Arc and that will have, in the Bay of Santander, one of its pilot projects. The objective is to advance in the creation of governance tools that allow public administrations to effectively integrate scientific knowledge and citizen participation in the management of the marine and coastal environment. For its development, IHCantabria has the collaboration of the Government of Cantabria and the Santander City Council.

The participation of IHCantabria in the GRAAL project is based on the experience accumulated during the development of the Integrated Management Plan for the Bay of Santander, known as ‘Plan Bahía‘. This project ─coordinated by IHCantabria and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Government of Cantabria, within the framework of the Complementary Plan for R+D+i in Marine Sciences, ThinkInAzul─, was developed between 2022 and 2025, with the objective of elaborating an action plan for the integrated management of the estuary. This project combined environmental, socioeconomic and regulatory studies with an extensive public participation process, allowing the design of a dynamic and adaptable instrument to the challenges posed by climate change.

With its participation in the GRAAL project, IHCantabria reinforces its role as a reference center in applied research in environmental management and in the transfer of knowledge to public administrations, which contributes to the international projection of Cantabria in the European Atlantic context.