2nd ARNET Meeting: bringing science closer to decision making was the central challenge in Faro

The tone was set right from the opening, and it could not have been more direct. André Pacheco, deputy director of ARNET and director of CIMA, the host institution, opened the meeting by naming the urgent challenges the country faces today: “the theme that brings us together could not be more topical: climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, extreme events and the transition to a sustainable blue economy are challenges that demand increasingly integrated responses.” It was this challenge that Pedro Raposo de Almeida, director of ARNET and MARE, translated into a single sentence: “science must be the engine of decision‐making, not just a repository of knowledge.” Cláudia Pascoal, deputy director of ARNET and director of CBMA, highlighted the scale the network has already reached, with researchers spread across the whole country, from Minho to the Algarve.”

The University of Algarve, through the voice of vice‐rector Patrícia Pinto, raised the same challenge, but from outside the network: “we need more bridges to knowledge, bridges between researchers and decision‐makers themselves, bridges between our university and society,” an idea reinforced by Cristiano Cabrita, vice‐president of CCDR Algarve, who acknowledged the difficulty of “public policy not always managing to properly incorporate scientific knowledge, whether due to distance or to decision‐makers lacking awareness.”

From research to decision‐making

The link between research and decision‐making was discussed throughout the meeting, with contributions from participants representing various organisations. Catarina Grilo, from WWF Portugal, offered a perspective from outside academia: she noted that science “is one of the contributions, but not the only one” in policy decisions, where factors such as the social acceptance of solutions play a particularly important role, and highlighted the role of NGOs in building this bridge between research and decision‐makers, with an agility the former do not always have.

On the public administration side, this same willingness to bridge the gap was evident, with Inês Alves, from the Portuguese Environment Agency, summing it up in one direct sentence: “faced with an increasingly complex reality, decisions must be grounded in solid, up‐to‐date knowledge. Decision‐making depends on knowledge.” Miguel Miranda (AIR Centre) and Gonçalo Duarte Gomes (ICNF) raised the challenges of balancing the blue economy with conservation, and the importance of restoring the direct involvement of local communities in managing the territory.

Valentina Calixto, from the Faro City Council, argued that direct public involvement continues to make a difference in decisions about the territory, citing as an example the public participation process for the A22 motorway, which resulted in many changes to accommodate the interests of the population. Teresa Cruz (MARE) gave the most complete example of this bridge between science, decision‐making and society, presenting the story of Portugal’s first fishery co‐management committee: that of the goose barnacle, created in 2021 in the Berlengas Nature Reserve, out of “many years of interactions between scientists and shellfish harvesters.”

Communication, services and data: the network’s tools

The meeting also devoted time to the tools that support ARNET’s networked work. Vera Sequeira (MARE) presented the journey of the

Communication group, now more visible than it was two years ago, and set a challenge for the future: to take a step beyond social media, towards more strategic communication capable of coherently conveying ARNET’s role in bringing science, policy and action closer together.

João Paulo Medeiros (MARE) presented the ARNET Services Platform, which aims to bring together, in a validated catalogue, the scientific services that the network’s centres can offer to external entities, from environmental monitoring to laboratory testing.

Meanwhile, Joana Boavida‐Portugal (MARE) presented the ARNET DataHub, created in 2022 to bring together the scientific data produced by the network’s various units. This work gained new momentum in 2025 with the partnership established with CoLab +Atlantic, through the creation of an interface capable of cross‐referencing numerical model data with measurements collected in the field by buoys, stations and genetic tools.

A broad programme

The meeting also included a wide range of other presentations, notably on the risks of coastal erosion and flooding in Faro and along the Mondego river, saline intrusion in the Guadiana estuary, the management of protected areas in the Algarve, low‐cost molecular tools for biodiversity monitoring, the biotechnological potential of macroalgae, and the challenges of deep‐sea mining and marine spatial planning in the face of climate change. On plastic pollution in Portuguese rivers, Giorgio Pace (CBMA) issued a challenge: to create a national observatory dedicated to this topic, extending to the network’s other units the work that has so far been carried out by CBMA.

The meeting closed on a note of confidence in the network’s future. André Pacheco recalled that the success of these two days was no accident, but the result of a shared goal: “When we are all working together towards that goal, we manage to create something quite special here, which shows that ARNET can truly work as a network.”

Text: Vera Sequeira

Photos: Patrícia Chaves and Érica Silva