With the intent to contribute to the international community’s efforts for enhanced conservation practices, in 2014 MedINA launched an ambitious three-year project titled INCREAte. Funded by the MAVA Foundation for Nature, the INCREAte project aims, inter alia, to develop an efficient and participatory approach to expedite the integration of culture and nature for better conservation outcomes. The INCREAte Approach is built on a set of six steps, two of which encourage the user to assess both the natural and cultural environment of the site in question.
The Greek island of Kythera, located opposite the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula, was selected as the pilot site in order to implement and evaluate the steps of the Approach. Hence, MedINA’s scientific team has been working on assessing the natural and cultural environment of Kythera through two rapid assessments that can now be found online. The reports are available in Greek.
The Cultural Rapid Assessment and the Environmental Rapid Assessment of Kythera have provided the necessary insights on important elements of the area’s natural and cultural environment, which has set the foundations for identifying the links between nature and culture and better designing consequent interventions.