Spain Charts Climate Risk to Protect Its Coastal Economy

Key Takeaways

• Climate Risk Comes Into Focus: Spain’s AcuAdapt project is assessing how climate change will impact marine aquaculture across the country’s entire coastline.
• Structured Risk Framework: The project applies the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change risk model, analyzing hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to evaluate long-term risks.
• Data-Driven Planning: By combining historical data with climate projections for 2040–2060 and 2080–2100, the initiative aims to identify future suitability for aquaculture species and locations.
• From Insight to Action: Results will be delivered as GIS layers and thematic maps, enabling integration into real-world maritime planning and decision-making.

Deep Dive

A new climate risk initiative in Spain is taking a forward-looking approach to a problem that has long been acknowledged but less often operationalized. How will climate changereshape the viability of marine aquaculture?

The project, AcuAdapt, is designed to assess climate-related risks along the entire Spanish coastline, with a focus on how shifting environmental conditions could affect where and how aquaculture can sustainably develop in the decades ahead. Funded through the Pleamar call from the Biodiversity Foundation and co-financed by the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund, the initiative reflects a broader push to embed climate risk into long-term maritime planning.

At its core, AcuAdapt adopts the risk-based framework developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which evaluates risk through the interplay of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. That framing, widely used in climate science, is increasingly finding its way into policy and operational decision-making, particularly in sectors like aquaculture where environmental dependencies are unavoidable.

Led by the Environmental Hydraulics Institute of the University of Cantabria, the project combines that framework with the Aquaculture Suitability Index to produce a more granular picture of risk. It draws on both historical environmental data and forward-looking climate projections, mapping how conditions may evolve across two key time horizons, 2040 to 2060 and 2080 to 2100. The goal is not just to understand change, but to quantify it in a way that supports decisions about species selection, site viability, and long-term investment.

For risk and sustainability professionals, the significance lies in how the findings are expected to be used. Rather than remaining a static report, the outputs will be translated into thematic maps and GIS layers that can integrate directly into existing planning systems. This allows public authorities and industry stakeholders to move from broad climate awareness to more precise, location-based risk management, aligning development strategies with projected environmental realities.

That shift is particularly relevant as aquaculture continues to expand as part of Europe’s blue economy ambitions, even as climate volatility introduces new layers of uncertainty. By linking climate projections with operational planning tools, AcuAdapt is effectively positioning climate risk as a core input into sustainability strategy, rather than a secondary consideration.

The project’s progress and results will be made publicly available through the Pleamar Programme website, with ongoing updates, and shared via the REECEA platform, part of Spain’s network for knowledge exchange in the blue economy.

In practice, AcuAdapt signals a more mature phase in climate adaptation efforts, one where the emphasis is not just on understanding risk, but on embedding it into the systems and decisions that shape how industries evolve.

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