Horizon Europe CoCo project: Co-creating coexistence: promoting policies, practices, and stakeholder engagement to integrate wildlife and livestock into sustainable multifunctional landscapes in Europe
- Type Project
- Status Firmado
- Execution 2024 -2027
- Assigned Budget 4.876.764,11 €
- Scope Europeo
- Main source of financing Horizonte Europa 2021-2027
- Project website Proyecto CoCo
The recovery of large carnivores and herbivores has created new challenges for pastoralism, such as wildlife damage, increased costs, and social conflicts. Disagreements among stakeholders hamper efforts to resolve these problems. The EU-funded CoCo project will focus on the relationship between livestock practices and wildlife damage, with the aim of integrating wildlife and pastoral management.
It will assess stakeholder perceptions, explore governance structures, examine the potential of new technologies, and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of various management scenarios. The project aims to collect quantitative data from at least 1,000 pastoralists, hunters, and landowners, as well as qualitative information from hundreds of stakeholders in 12 countries. The results will contribute to a Roadmap for Coexistence.
The recovery of wildlife populations (large carnivores and large herbivores) has created many additional challenges for pastoralism, which is already under pressure from multiple socioeconomic factors. These challenges include damage (predation), additional costs, and numerous social conflicts. Some of the main obstacles to addressing these challenges are conflicts between stakeholders and the contested nature of relevant knowledge. The CoCo project will address these obstacles by adopting multidisciplinary approaches with strong representation from the social sciences and a multi-stakeholder approach with widespread stakeholder involvement that facilitates the co-creation of knowledge with high legitimacy.
The process will cover:
The relationship between livestock farming practices and wildlife damage.
Ways to integrate wildlife management and pastoral management.
The perceptions and values that different stakeholders have about the interface between pastoralism and wildlife.
Experience with different governance structures.
The potential of new and emerging technologies in both wildlife management and monitoring and grazing.
A cost-benefit analysis of different scenarios for pastoral and wildlife management.
The project will use diverse methods such as systematic reviews, field surveys, face-to-face interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and modeling. The project's ambition is to collect original quantitative data from at least 1,000 herders, 1,000 hunters, and 1,000 landowners, and qualitative data from hundreds of stakeholders deployed comparatively across 12 countries.
The insights emerging from the reviews, the analysis of new data, and modeling will be integrated into a Coexistence Roadmap that will produce relevant policy recommendations for better standardization, harmonization, and integration of pastoralist and wildlife management systems. This will reduce conflicts and ensure multifunctional landscapes for both pastoralists and wildlife.
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