Green Actions for Pristine skies

The core of GAPs project is to raise awareness about light pollution, a contemporary but underestimated transregional environmental threat to biodiversity and humans and to reduce it through cross-border cooperation by adopting interventions with a holistic ecosystem-based approach.

The causes of light pollution are addressed with nature-based solutions, adopting responsible public lighting with ALARA lighting levels, aiming to prevent habitat fragmentation, protecting and conserving biodiversity ΚΑΙ improving the affected population’s quality of life. With GAPs, lighting infrastructures are transformed to dark infrastructures (as recommended by EU publications Science for Environment Policy/FUTURE BRIEF: Light Pollution: Mitigation measures for environmental protection) with a zero environmental footprint.

GAPs includes specific pilot dark infrastructures that will cover 1,21 ha of shared municipal spaces and will be accessible to 10.474 permanent residents

GAPs will create tools to upgrade the partners’ operational capacity with the GAPs Green Paper, a strategic document and an action plan for the implementation of an “ecosystem-based approach” with nature-based solutions that will serve as a framework for subsequent design decisions for public lighting. At the same time, GAPs will develop a Smart EcoLighting web-designer, aiming at identifying the optimal solution for municipal lighting using multi-criteria decision-making assistance techniques

The project strengthens and maintains the cooperation of the partners through the implementation of a cross-border Dark Infrastructure with Pristine Night Lighting that culminates in the Pristine Skies City Network, formed by cores connected by corridors in which darkness is an additional quality.

GAPs redefines the character of the partners’ areas as Dark Sky Oases, constituting a new brand name for them, highlighting their pristine skies as an asset for the adoption of astrotourism as an extension of existing forms of ecotourism.