Climatic changes are slow on average, but at the extremes they seem to be becoming more frequent. This slowly changing average prevents us changing proactively, and we end up reacting after disasters, as happened in 2017 with the fires in Portugal. The main aim of Risk-AquaSoil (RAS) is to awaken society to the fact that climatological disasters can and will happen during our life. Once awoken, the second purpose of RAS is to propose simpler and more efficient tools and services for managing the more harmful risks in different places of the Atlantic Area of Europe from Ireland to Andalucía. However, it is not enough to just have the solutions, as they have to be understood by the local communities by participating, adopting and applying them. This is why RAS has also a final and third objective, to understand what political and local levels can be triggered to allow these new principles of management for a better resilience to climatic changes to be applied in the fields by farmers and rural people.

Recognizing that Atlantic Area presents a high exposure to climate change it is essential to developed strategies that can help us to face climate change effects. RAS Project represents an innovative approach joining Public Authorities and Research Centers together with farmers, local community and youngsters in the design of adaptation/mitigation strategies. In our region, RAS allowed people to be brought closer from this subject and to bring to public discussion the effects of fires on soil erosion and water quality.

The Risk Aqua Soil project takes current environmental concerns and looks to establish science-based interventions or ‘good practice guidance’ to help reduce the impact of our changing climate by working with all stakeholders. Climate change is challenging the way we live with more extreme weather events. Rainfall patterns seem to fall less predictably and with more intensity which increases the risk or flood, erosion, poor water quality, and reducing water security.