Case study

ISLA BONITA – Beautiful island: Supporting Managing Authorities to Restore the Oceans and Waters on Islands

Sep 2026 - Aug 2031

Europe

Partner

CINEA (funding agency)

Industries

Ocean Conservation

Summary

ISLA BONITA aims to support island managing authorities in advancing the restoration of oceans and waters through Living Labs, nature-based solutions, and a Mission Ocean Accelerator Hub physically located at PLOCAN.

Budget

Overall

Estimated Project Cost: 17.656.553,67 €

Requested EU Contribution: 16.161.078,00 €

blueOASIS

Estimated Project Cost: 768.437,50 €

Requested EU Contribution: 537.906,25 €

Introduction

In line with the European Ocean Pact, Isla Bonita has the overall aim to make the ocean and waters become the EU island communities’ best allies by supporting island managing Authorities to drive systemic transitions to achieve the three Mission objectives including relevant climate resilience across the 3 lighthouse basins.

The key enabler features in Isla Bonita required to achieve the projects ambitious aims are:

9 stakeholder Living Labs led by the island managing Authorities, 8 as full project partners, will co-develop the Demos and Mission roadmap with full and meaningful involvement.
Isla Bonita project coordinator (PC) PLOCAN, PHAROS AA lighthouse project PC, brings together the PCs and partners from the BlueMission CSAs, other Mission lighthouse and related projects from all 3 basins.
Isla Bonita will carefully collate a range of NBS and other solutions into a portfolio with broad applicability to the Mission objectives across the 3 basins, to maximise scalability while ensuring relevance to the imperatives in each Demo island and basin.
A new permanent Mission Ocean Accelerator Hub, physically located in PLOCAN and hosted on the BlueBioMatch platform, with an expert finance partner team to support and energise the funding of island Mission roadmaps, and the bankability of NBS solutions to attract investment.
Isla Bonita will establish a Cross-Basin Task Force to ensure the project stakeholder engagement, Demos, upscaling strategy and D&C are consistent and coherent across the 3 basins, maximising cross-fertilisation and knowledge sharing. This task force will be led by Submar supported by the other Lighthouse CSA partners which will also act as basin leads. The 3 Lighthouse CSA PCs will dovetail D&C events and activities from their CSA projects with the Isla Bonita basin-wide events to promote Isla Bonita.
A coherent replication/ upscaling strategy driven by the Cross-Basin Task Force to support the Mission objectives beyond the Demo islands.