Project detail

Acknowledgement

The SOTERIA project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research & Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 101077433.

VACUNCLIM

Climate impacts and potential mitigation strategies for the cattle sector in Spain analysed through a novel modelling framework

Ruminant livestock, and cattle in particular, are considered a large contributor to global GHG and N emissions. However, beyond generalisations, climate impacts largely vary depending on production systems, management and soil and climatic conditions. Moreover, domesticated ruminants largely rely on grass (either grazed, fresh or conserved) that grows in land (sometimes non-fertilised) that could have been grazed by ancient herbivores in past epochs (emissions were in balance with GHG sinks and, therefore there was no direct impacts on the climate).

These past emissions from ancient wild herbivores in land that is currently occupied (directly, e.g. grazed, or indirectly, through feed production) by domestic animals (i.e ruminants generally) comprise what is defined as baseline emissions. Depending on whether the concept is referred to the Holocene or Pleistocene epochs, the emission values (based on the herbivory carrying capacity of the ecosystems) will be different. Additionally, most studies to assess climate impacts from livestock use a single climate metric like GWP100, a metric that, for short-lived gases like CH4, cannot translate emission pathways to additional warming caused (which is the main basis-target now for Paris Agreement). Considering that main GHG emitted by ruminants is CH4, there is a need to incorporate other metrics that could be more aligned for assisting the Paris Agreement 1.5ºC target.

Generally, climate impacts accounting methodologies can hardly encompass all of the factors affecting the variability of emissions in ruminant livestock systems (e.g. site conditions) as they use verygeneralised methods and principles based on lineal relationships between the animals and the emissions. Additionally, the Baseline concept has not yet been accepted as an accounting rule (we should discount some emissions from livestock that, in principle, will occur irrespective of having or not having livestock) and only quantification of such emissions and incorporation in emissions accounting schemes have just been recently proposed as an alternative way (mainly by the BC3 group, following perspective by Manzano&White, 2019).

We intend to solve some of these limitations in this project using as case study the Spanish cattle sector. In concrete terms. First, we intend to produce and apply a novel framework integrating LCA-analysis and whole-farm modelling to best estimate GHG and N emissions from dairy and beef systems, trying to capture non-linearities and how management, climate and soil affects each component of the system and the whole system together. Second, we will refine the method to estimate baseline emissions that correspond to the Spanish cattle sector, and thereby refine estimations of anthropogenic GHG and N emissions that are conventionally assigned to the cattle. Last, we will model potential GHG and N mitigation measures at the farm level and use alternative climate metrics (GWP*) in order to explore how potential pathways of emissions (including mitigation strategies) may help to ameliorate their impact on global warming and get closer to the objectives of climate neutrality for the years 2050 or 2100.

Time Frame
2023 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Proyecto PID2022-137631OB-I00 financiado por MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 y por FEDER, UE

BIOSTABILITY

Relaciones entre biodiversidad, función y estabilidad en ecología de comunidades

Previous scientific evidence has demonstrated the positive effects of biodiversity for the functioning of ecosystems, as well as for the stability of many of these functions. However, most of these studies have focused on functions relating to a single trophic level, often plants, ignoring the multiple interactions in which these plants are involved.

Thus, the evidence for biodiversity-function and biodiversity-stability relationships that we have for one trophic level may not extend to more complex multi-trophic assemblages. With BIOSTABILITY, we propose to use records of interactions between plants and their pollinators, as well as measures of plant reproductive success, collected in a series of spatially independent metacommunities over time, to explore the relationship between biodiversity, function and functional stability. Thus, in addition to the effect of species diversity, our study would consider the effect of diversity and composition of interactions, as well as the resulting community structure. 

Functional stability consists of multiple dimensions, such as temporal invariance, but also resistance and resilience to perturbations, so we propose a series of small, local-scale perturbations that will change species diversity levels, to assess whether and how the relationships between biodiversity and baseline stability might change. BIOSTABILITY aims to answer the following specific questions: 1. How does biodiversity at different levels of organisation (from species to ecosystems) affect the functional stability of ecosystems? 2. What is the effect of perturbations that change species diversity and species composition on diversity-stability relationships? 3. How will climate change affect the relationships between diversity and functional stability? By connecting empirical data with complex theoretical models, this project will represent a fundamental step towards improving our ability to predict the outcome of ecosystem perturbations and their impact on community structure and function.

Time Frame
2023 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

SIGUE-Mars

Science and instrumentation for the study of geochemical processes in Mars

The Thematic Network Science and Instrumentation for the study of (bio)geochemical processes in Mars (SIGUE-Mars) is composed by the 10 Spanish Research Groups of Excellence that work in the topic and belong to the Science Teams of the actual and future Martian and other solar bodies missions: The Science Teams of the RLS (Raman Laser Spectrometer) instrument of the ExoMars mission from the ESA, of the SuperCam instrument of the Mars2020 by NASA and for the Raman instrument on the MMX mission by JAXA.

The SIGUE-Mars network has the following objectives: 

1-To encourage the advance in the (bio)geochemical study of Mars, to clarify the alteration processes and detect biomolecules or biominerals (biosignatures). 

2- To prepare the Spanish human teams capable of analyzing the information that will arrive from Mars within the three missions, ExoMars, Mars2020 and MMX. 3- To enhance the Spanish Science in the international context on Mars research. 

The Network will meet twice in a year, with the participation of PIs and the members of the working teams of each research group. These 4 workshops will aim to: 

1. To define the strategy for the new research works to be developed by each partner with their resources and the presentation of their results to the scientific community. 

2. To develop a training action direct to the future works in the ExoMars, Mars2020 and MMX missions. 

3. To socially disseminate the most relevant aspects of our research activities around Mars. 

An attendance of 25 members of the 10 research groups is expected to each workshop that will take place in 4 cities. Moreover, an internationally recognized speaker, expert in the (bio)geochemical processes in Mars and terrestrial analogs, will be invited to each workshop. Each workshop will have in parallel a social dissemination event in each place. The dissemination through the web page of the SIGUE-Mars network (news, event, relevant publications, etc.) and the Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) are strategic activities of the Network.

Time Frame
2023 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 1. Climate Basis

Acknowledgement

Ayuda RED2022-134726-T por MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

SOILNET

Trophic and non-trophic interactions in soil ecological networks and their impact on ecosystem services

Soils sustain a vast amount of biodiversity that provides essential ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, climate regulation, or plant health. Despite its ecological relevance, soils remain largely unexplored, due to both historical and practical reasons. Some basic scientific questions on the biology and ecology of soil organism remain unanswered and the scarce evidence available is scattered across the literature.

The impact of soil biodiversity in the biodiversity aboveground, the influence of soil ecological interactions on the fluxes of organic carbon and nutrients in ecosystems, and the effects of soil food web architecture on ecosystem services (plant growth, C sequestration, or GHG emissions), are topics that remain under explored and deserve further attention. In a context of climate change, these and other issues might have a direct impact on ecosystem conservation, agroecosystems sustainability, and future human well-being. 

A previous network (EcoSoil) identified the scientific challenges that soil ecology faces, including a) the identification of knowledge gaps in the functioning of soil ecological networks, b) the development of multi-trophic approaches to assess the complex soil architecture, c) the understanding of the links between soil biodiversity and soil physics, chemistry and structure, and d) the reconciliation between molecular and taxonomic descriptions and shortening current taxonomic impediments. To face these challenges, the SoilNet network aims to support a community of scientists working in soil biodiversity and ecosystem services, to develop a common conceptual framework compiling the multitrophic and complex nature of soils. 

SoilNet brings together soil scientists from 9 different groups with diverse expertise, including soil diversity and functioning, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem services, and climate change. Our specific objectives are i) To develop a conceptual framework that relates trophic interactions among main soil guilds and their activities at different spatial scales and ecosystem services, ii) To assess the current status of the ecological (trophic and non-trophic) interactions in soils, and the contributions of each group to soil structure, and iii) To train early-career researchers on soil sampling techniques, morphological and genetic diversity and functional attributes of soil biodiversity. 

To reach these objectives, we will develop scientific, formation, and dissemination activities to develop a new conceptual framework on soil organisms interactions and their impact on soil functioning, and to train early career researchers on soil sampling and biodiversity inventory. We will promote mobility among groups, organize field days and webinars, and enhance the internationalisation of the activities of the network. SoilNet results will complement the main outcomes of several on-going projects on the National Plan of I+D+i, and will be shared with a number of scientific agents including scientific societies, science-support agencies and institutions involved in ongoing EU research programmes, decision groups, and national authorities. Our results will be also disseminated to both scientific and citizenship through scientific articles, open seminars, and social media.

Time Frame
2023 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

Acknowledgement

Ayuda ED2022-134253-T financiada por MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

AQUAIBER-NET

Red científica sobre los riesgos de los eventos extremos y la contaminación en los sistemas fluviales ibéricos: aplicación a la gestión

AQUAIBER-NET consolidates and enlarges the multi-disciplinary network already established under the frame of several previous scientific competitive projects and aims to further provide insights into the current challenges of Iberian Rivers, including the sea-land interface ecosystems (estuaries), related to hydrological extremes (water scarcity and floods) and pollution under global change, both from scientific and management perspectives.

The network will focus between many other topics on: - Consolidating and expanding an active network between the partners that can stand at the forefront of the relevant scientific and technological research - Facilitating and expediting interaction and exchange of ideas between different disciplines, including chemistry, climate, microbiology, ecotoxicology, ecology, hydrology, geomorphology, economy and water resources management. - Elaborating, on an emerging paradigm, on the effects of water extremes on Iberian rivers - Delivering best-practice advice to water managers and solid scientific knowledge to decision makers - Facilitate the transfer of knowledge to the stakeholders, end-users and the wider public - Serving as a forum for early-stage and young researchers to network, present results and obtain state-of-the-art knowledge - Keeping the scientific community at the cutting edge of this river science interdisciplinary field of scientific and technological research - Contribute to promote at the EU agenda the specific issues of global change in the basins of the Iberian region, and contribute with this knowledge to the WFD update and implementation in the Mediterranean region. - Contribute to the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, mainly in goals number #6 (clean water and sanitation) and #15 (life on land). In sumary, the overall benefit of AQUAIBER-NET is that it will address the open challenges associated with hydrological extremes. In addition, AQUAIBER-NET will draw the expertise and knowledge from all the relevant past and on-going EC-funded projects in the field of hydrological extremes and fluvial ecosystems, as well as from numerous national relevant projects, that are undertaken towards specific research directions with which this network relates.

Time Frame
2023 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Ayuda RED2022-134253-T financiada por MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

ACCREU

Assessing climate change risk in Europe

ACCREU will contribute to the just transition towards climate resilience in the EU, its Member States, and regions, by co-creating and co-delivering with a wide array of stakeholders, new knowledge and actionable insights that connect the challenges of adaptation and mitigation with the multiple and new challenges our society is facing.

At the scientific level, it will provide a comprehensive, integrated, co-created, socio-economic evaluation of future climate risk under different adaptation and mitigation scenarios, across European countries, sectors, households, and business types. Specific attention will be paid to non-market impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, and health. ACCREU will advance models and methods for climate risk assessment, and integrated adaptation decisionmaking. Novel investigations will be developed to assess poverty, equity, financial, and fiscal implications of climate risk and the related policies. At the societal/economic level, ACCREU will engage stakeholders involved in different adaptation decision types to design practical solutions to successfully mainstream climate resilience and adaptation into decision-making processes. To ensure effective uptake and long-term use of its results, the co-designed applied case studies will involve EU-level stakeholders, such as Directorate-Generals, the JRC, the EEA, the Mission Adaptation, as well as local practitioners, businesses, and authorities.

Proyect URL
https://www.accreu.eu/

Time Frame
2023 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

FONDAZIONE CENTRO EURO-MEDITERRANEOSUI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI (FONDAZIONE CMCC)
INTERNATIONALES INSTITUT FUER ANGEWANDTE SYSTEMANALYSE (IIASA)
UNIVERSITAET GRAZ (UNI GRAZ)
STICHTING VU (STICHTING VU)
ECOLOGIC INSTITUT gemeinnützige GmbH (ECOLOGIC)
UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA (UNIVE)
ASOCIACION BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
STICHTING DELTARES (Deltares)
POTSDAM-INSTITUT FUR KLIMAFOLGENFORSCHUNG EV (PIK)
GCF - GLOBAL CLIMATE FORUM EV (GCF)
DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET (DTU)
CLIMATE ANALYTICS GMBH (CA)
UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT (UU)

GRAPHICS

Integrated analysis of air pollution, human health and income inequality for alternative climate change scenarios.

With the support of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, the GRAPHICS project will explore the health impacts attributable to long-term exposure to ambient air pollution associated with alternative socioeconomic narratives and decarbonisation strategies co-designed with multilevel stakeholders.

Air pollution is the largest environmental health risk. In 2019, 99 % of the world's population was exposed to levels of fine particulate matter above the health-based guideline level set by the World Health Organization. With the support of the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions, the GRAPHICS project will explore the health impacts attributable to long-term exposure to ambient air pollution associated with alternative socioeconomic narratives and decarbonisation strategies co-designed with multilevel stakeholders. Considering that it is something often ignored in global scenario analysis, GRAPHICS will also estimate household air pollution impacts for alternative futures. Results will incorporate within-region population heterogeneity, in order to identify the contribution of different socioeconomic groups to air pollution and to evaluate how these groups are impacted.

Time Frame
2023 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

SELVANS

Soil condition and capability mapping for sustainable forest management

The conservation and improvement of forest soil resources is essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and theEU Green Deal. Policy-makers and land managers need detailed information -quantitative and spatially explicit- on the effects of management strategies on soil condition and capability for supplying ecosystem services.

The rise of digital soil mapping (DSM) and integrative modelling approaches have brought powerful tools for generating data-driven knowledge that can guide the decisionmaking process. SELVANS will implement an innovative DSM framework for assessing the effects of contemporary forest management on soil change, expressed as biogeochemical processes and microbial functions. The hypothesis is that the response of indicators of soil condition to management practices will differ by soil class depending on the biophysical environment, inherent soil properties and the legacy of land use history. Furthermore, SELVANS will investigate the links between anthropedogenesis and soil microbial functional diversity, and its effects on carbon and nutrient cycling. Soil classes and the degree of anthropogenic pressures on soil will be generated using data-mining algorithms, environmental covariates, time series of satellite imagery, national forestry inventory data and legacy soil data. Soil condition will be characterized with a comprehensive set of physical, chemical and biological soil properties (e.g., soil organic carbon, nutrients, soil microbial diversity and functioning) originating from completed and ongoing projects evaluating the functioning of forest soils. SELVANS' outputs will identify thresholds for decline in soil condition and risk of soil degradation, with an impact for forest management and conservation of soil resources. Finally, the capability of soils for delivering ecosystem services will be quantified applying the integrative modelling framework ARIES.

Time Frame
2023 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

PALIMPSEST

Value generative landscape practices for sustainability transition

PALIMPSEST takes inspiration from the original meaning of the Greek word ??????????? (palimpsestos, ‘again’ + ‘scrape’), which describes the process of the writing practices over papyrus: existing text was scraped and washed off, the surface re-smoothed, and the new literary material written on the saved material.

PALIMPSEST adopts this re-writing perspective and grounds it on a living heritage approach. PALIMPSEST envisages regenerating the lost “sustainability wisdom” underlying the production of heritage landscapes through the activation of co-creation processes involving creative actors, technical stakeholders and civic society. Here architecture, design and art practices will dialogue with place-specific needs and broad systemic challenges to imagine new scenarios and experiment with innovative practices connecting human actions, landscape heritage and sustainability objectives. 

Such experiments will envision novel Landscape Scenarios aiming at producing dedicated Landscape Services, inspired by the generation of beneficial outcomes on ecosystem functions, which the creative contribution of CCIs will empower. Human practices will arise as relevant agents of a new sustainable palimpsest process. PALIMPSEST will integrate the aforementioned Landscape Services in environmental-sensitive solutions with sustainable finance infrastructures to support the sharing and circulating of positive externalities at different levels among the landscape service actors and communities. 

PALIMPSEST revolves around three pilots with strong cultural identities and relevant environmental problems: Lodz (PL), a UNESCO city of films fighting the highest air pollution levels in Europe; Milan fringes (IT), traditional agricultural landscapes struggling with unsustainable water use; Jerez de la Frontera (ES), an Andalusian wine landscape and vernacular site challenged by renewable energy production facilities.

Proyect URL
https://www.palimpsest-project.eu/

Time Frame
2023 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

Acknowledgement

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or REA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

POLITECNICO DI MILANO (POLIMI)
AALBORG UNIVERSITET (AAU)
ASOCIACION BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
ANCI TOSCANA ASSOCIAZIONE (ANCI)
SEMANTIKA, INFORMACIJSKE TEHNOLOGIJE, DOO (SEM)
AYUNTAMIENTO DE JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA (JER)
ENTE REGIONALE PER I SERVIZI ALL' AGRICULTURA E ALLE FORESTE (ERSAF)
INSTITUTE OF COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTER SYSTEMS (ICCS)
NOMAD GARDEN SL (NGAR)
D.TSAKALIDIS-G.DOMALIS OE (NVCR)
COAL (COAL)
LODZ ART CENTER (?AC)
ZAPADOCESKA UNIVERZITA V PLZNI (UWB)
CULTURALINK SL (CLINK)
ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE KARAKORUM (KAR)

SWITCH

Switching European food systems for a just, healthy and sustainable dietary transition through knowledge and innovation

The overarching goal of the SWITCH EU-DIETS proposal is to improve understanding of knowledge, accessibility and facilitation gaps that limit present large scale adoption of sustainable and healthy diets among EU citizens and to develop and demonstrate appropriate innovative solutions and tools to facilitate the transition towards healthy and sustainable dietary behavior at all levels of the multi-actor food system in EU.

The transition towards sustainable, safe, healthy and inclusive food systems, from farm to fork has become a key priority for EU green policies, in line with the UN goals sustainable development goals (SDGs). The biggest challenge at present is represented by the limited knowledge of influence dietary choices in EU and limits large scale adoption of healthy and sustainable diets. The SWITCH EUDIETS ambition is to accelerate the behavioral shift of EU citizens towards a more sustainable and healthy patterns, using Research and innovation (R&I) as a driver to increase knowledge, accessibility and facilitation strategies at all level of the food systems, involving a multi-actor systemic approach and a co-creation strategy to delineate solutions fair to consumers that support virtuous behavior throughout the whole food chain system. For a successful large scale adoption of healthy dietary behavior, all the actors of the food systems need to be engaged, connected and valorized. In pursuing its objectives the project aims to go beyond the present state-of-the-art addressing the most relevant points of the program topic ?Transition to healthy and sustainable dietary behaviour 

Proyect URL
https://switchdiet.eu/

Time Frame
2023 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

FONDAZIONE CENTRO EURO-MEDITERRANEOSUI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI (CMCC)
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DELLA CAMPANIA LUIGI VANVITELLI (UNICAMP)
FUTURE FOOD INSTITUTE ETS (FFI Foundation)
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II (UNINA)
LEIBNIZ-ZENTRUM FUER AGRARLANDSCHAFTSFORSCHUNG (ZALF) e.V. (ZALF)
CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOGSKOLA AB (CHALMERS)
INTERNATIONALES INSTITUT FUER ANGEWANDTE SYSTEMANALYSE (IIASA)
WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY (WU)
INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT (INRAE)
UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID (UPM)
ASOCIACION BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
POSTI S.R.L. (POSTI)
RISE RESEARCH INSTITUTES OF SWEDEN AB (RISE)
KUTXA FUNDAZIOA (KUTXA)
BASQUE CULINARY CENTER FUNDAZIOA (BCC)
AGENZIA REGIONALE PER L'ATTUAZIONEDEI PROGRAMMI REGIONALI IN CAMPO AGRICOLO E PER LO SVILUPPO RURALE (LAORE SARDEGNA) (LAORE)
AGRO CAMERA AZIENDA SPECIALE DELLA CAMERA DI COMMERCIO, INDUSTRIA, ARTIGIANATO E AGRICOLTURA DI ROMA PER L'AGROALIMENTARE (AGROCAM)
VEREIN ZUR FORDERUNG EINER NACHHALTIGEN URBANEN KULTUR EV (BAUMHAUS)

Shared Dialogues

Enabling shared dialogues and reflections on the Mar Menor environmental conflict

Shared Dialogues is a transdisciplinary project which explores participatory and artistic tools to collectively reflect about ecological loss and environmental conflict experiences, in particular those related to the Mar Menor lagoon eutrophication. It involves a women team of 2 artists (Josune Urrutia and Raquel Meyers) and 5 researchers (Paula Novo, Violeta Cabello, Paula Zuluaga Guerra, María Mancilla y Marcela Brugnach).

The Mar Menor (Murcia, South-Eastern Spain) is Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon and the first in this continent to receive the status of legal personhood following its ecological collapse. The lagoon suffers from severe eutrophication which triggered an algal bloom in 2016, turning into events of mass mortality of aquatic biota later in 2019 and 2021. This ecological degradation is partly attributed to the development of intensive irrigated agriculture in the surrounding area “Campo de Cartagena”.

The Mar Menor is also the first ecosystem in Europe being declared a legal person by the Spanish government (Ley 19/2022, de 30 de septiembre, para el reconocimiento de personalidad jurídica a la laguna del Mar Menor y su cuenca), a milestone in environmental governance and for the global movement on rights of nature.

Shared Dialogues builds upon an action research process with diverse actors affected by the Mar Menor eutrophication. For over a year, the process explored the methodological umbrella of Transformation Labs for facilitating dialogue spaces between polarized positions over the causes and solutions to the eutrophication problem. By the end of the process, we asked how visual arts could help convey and reflect over the individual and collective experiences we had in those spaces. 

The main outcome of Shared Dialogues are 20 visual stories gathered in an outreach publication entitled Ecotono. Evocating its original definition as zones of transition or overlap between different ecosystems, we propose the notion of ecotones as a metaphor for the intersections among communities and stories that inhabit the Mar Menor territory.

Proyect URL
https://www.shareddialogues.org/

Time Frame
2023 - 2023

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

BC3 contribution

BC3 co-designed and co-facilitated the action-research process, including interviews and participatory workshops. It was also involved in developing the methodology for translating the information generating in this process to a visual format and in co-creating the stories. BC3 facilitated a workshop with local actors in which the

Acknowledgement

This work has been founded by UKRI Research England under the Participatory Research funding stream; the Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Juan de la Cierva (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and Ramón y Cajal (RYC2021- 031626-I); the María de Maeztu program for accreditation of excellence 2023-2027 (CEX2021- 001201-M); the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2025 program; and the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Training and Innovation Network ‘NEWAVE – Next Water Governance’ under funding agreement No. 861509.

Partners

Leeds University
Basque Centre for Climate Change
Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua
Josune Urrutia

RECODYN

Ecosystem recovery dynamics and their response to climate change and habitat fragmentation

Global change degrades ecosystems worldwide. To mitigate its effects is the environmental challenge of our age, and restoration has emerged as the main strategy to stem the biodiversity crisis and repair damaged ecosystems. Despite substantial progress on the number of restoration studies and datasets, there is a fundamental gap in our understanding and prediction of the patterns and mechanisms underlying ecological restoration and how they are altered by global change.

The goal of RECODYN is to determine the recovery rates and trajectories of biodiversity, community structure and ecosystem functioning in complex multitrophic communities, and how climate change and habitat fragmentation – two of the largest threats to biodiversity and ecosystems in terrestrial systems – influence those dynamics. To achieve this, I will use an integrative approach that combines the development of new theory on metacommunities and temperature-dependent food web dynamics in close dialogue with a unique long-term terrestrial mesocosm experiment

Time Frame
2023 - 2027

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

BC3 contribution

Bc3 will contribute to the project being the host institution of the PI

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

IMAGINE adaptation

IMAGINE climate change adaptation in urban areas

Cities around the world are investing in sea walls, cooling solutions, and drought strategies to cope with climate change. But a simple question remains: how do we know if these efforts are actually working? The ERC-funded IMAGINE adaptation project tackles this challenge by going beyond purely technical solutions. It promotes more inclusive ways of evaluating climate action: ones that consider equity and justice, and that learn from both successes and failures. Working with 12 cities across the globe, the project will help redefine what “successful” climate adaptation looks like. Together with local partners, it will co-develop practical ways to track progress, evaluate results, and learn over time, so that climate plans protect everyone and remain effective in the long run.

Impacts of climate change are happening as a result of extreme
temperatures, sea-level rise, storm surges, or droughts. Communities and
governments across the globe are preparing through actions to increase
climate resilience. However, progress made to date to adapt is still
poorly understood and tracked due to a lack of theoretical understanding
and means to evaluate how well the world is adapting. Further barriers
include unclear goals and metrics for adaptation in the absence of a
shared definition of successful adaptation. Finding a response to this
question is at the core of the international climate debate and holds
particular significance at the local level, where assets and lives of
millions of people are at risk.

'IMAGINE adaptation' addresses
the imperative of how to evaluate adaptation in urban areas as a
contemporary complex phenomenon with implications across governance
scales. The current focus on policy progress can be useful as a first
step, but it is not indicative of effective adaptation. A broader
understanding of success in adaptation is required: one that transcends
technocratic approaches and considers equity, justice, and maladaptive
issues.

Through 'IMAGINE adaptation', the aim is to respond to
four timely and ambitious objectives: First, revisiting and
reformulating the concept of successful adaptation using expert and
local views (Objective 1, O1). Second, exploring trends and needs
regarding monitoring and evaluation and how these may enable or hinder
adaptation (O2). Third, participating in and learning from local
adaptation evaluation practices through a comparative case study
research across 12 urban areas worldwide (O3). Finally, discussing how
evaluations of local progress can inform global goals (O4). The outputs
of this project will provide a reference for future adaptation
assessment studies and pioneer the understanding of ways to enable
far-reaching transformative urban adaptation through processes of
evaluation and learning.

Proyect URL
https://imagineadapt.bc3research.org/

Time Frame
2023 - 2027

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

BC3 contribution

BC3 is the Host Institution and the only partner for this European Research Council Starting Grant project IMAGINE Adaptation led by Principal Investigator Marta Olazabal.

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

FERTILAB

Closing cycles towards local sustainability in agriculture: production of nutrient-enriched biofertilisers and organic amendments with biopesticidal and biostimulant properties

FertiLab is a multidisciplinary proposal where digested sludge from different sources, a waste available practically all over Spain, changes its paradigm from waste to a resource to produce value-added products. It is well known that this waste will become an increasingly difficult waste to be managed according to new regulations.

FertiLab aims to give a second life to wastewater digested sludge and others by their conversion into three main families of products with a critical interest in sustainable agriculture: 

• Mineral fertilizers enriched with nutrients present in sludge: especially struvite and, in second term, vivianite. 
• Biopesticides through solid-state fermentation, a technology where sludge is inoculated with specific strains to produce a stabilised organic amendment with pesticide properties against a predefined plague. 
• Biostimulants through solid-state fermentation, where sludge is inoculated with specific strains that produce a large number of defined bioproducts that improve specific properties of the stabilized organic amendment. 

These properties can include a better plant growth, higher production, improved qualities, etc. All these processes are intimately related to the strategic line of the call: Improvement of agriculture sustainability at territorial level based on agroecology principles and living labs, as they change the current scenario of intensive agriculture to more local strategies, by closing nutrient cycles, using organic amendments and substituting chemical products with high environmental impact as mineral fertilizers and chemical pesticides. 

From the technical perspective, two more important aspects must be highlighted: on one hand, digested sludge are inherently produced at local level, so the solutions proposed in FertiLab can be also locally implemented, with the clear related benefits. On the other hand, the proposal includes significant technical efforts to evaluate the possible use and application of the obtained bioproduct, thus promoting the successful commercialization and market uptake of the developed novel bio-based agricultural ingredients. On top of that, the creation of a new Living Lab for Sustainable Fertilization will act as a catalyst toward the implementation of an available open platform where all new and existing agricultural proposals can be technically, environmentally and economically studied. 

In fact, sustainability analysis will also be one of the main activities of the proposal. Other benefits FertiLab in relation to agriculture are obvious: increase of biodiversity, positive effect in wildfires, greenhouse gas reduction, carbon sequestration in soils or low energy consumption. All of them come from the change of paradigm that is the core of this proposal. 

Finally, it is important to mention that the proposed is in line with the emerging European regulations and, in a wider scale, with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDGs, 2015, https://sdgs.un.org/goals), especially in the three following ones: 

• SDG 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. 
• SDG 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. 
•  SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. In summary, FertiLab is designed to develop specific research lines to promote a local, sustainable and low impact agriculture, with a wide variety of parallel benefits in related and non-related sectors.

Time Frame
2022 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Proyecto PLEC2022-009252 de investigación financiado por MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 y por la Unión Europea NextGenerationEU/ PRTR

Partners

SOCIEDAD FOMENTO AGRICOLA CASTELLONENSE SA
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGEKLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI
UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA
UNIVERSIDAD MIGUEL HERNANDEZ DE ELCHE
INSTITUT DE RECERCA I TECNOLOGIA AGROALIMENTARIES (IRTA)

BIOTraCes

Biodiversity and transformative change for plural and nature-positive societies

BIOTraCes develops knowledge, tools and novel approaches that enable transformative changes (TC), necessary for achieving a nature positive society.

We aim to contribute to more inclusive, effective and just public policies, local strategies and corporate concerns on biodiversity aligned with the European Green Deal and SDGs. To this end, we will engage with diverse stakeholder networks around 9 transformative biodiversity innovations in high-impact sectors - agriculture & food, forestry, water, and urbanisation. These local case studies across Europe will help understand in context how plural and often marginalized values, identities (intersectionality), and knowledge systems, concerning living with and caring for nature, can shape behaviour. The case studies will create a portfolio of good and failed examples by discerning power lock-ins, leverage opportunities and enabling actors, and by testing co-produced interventions. Also, we will analyse indirect drivers of biodiversity loss: structural factors and lock-ins that constitute barriers to sustainable decisions and behaviour. A Theory of Transformative Change (ToTC) will synthesise our findings, showing steps on the path to biodiversity recovery and informing public and private strategies and approaches for initiating, accelerating and (up)scaling TC. BIOTraCes? originality is threefold: 

1) An approach of transdisciplinary collaboration, based on action research, co-production and colearning.

2) Operationalising in research and action principles of pluralising (acknowledging variety in values), empowering (enhancing agency of marginalised groups), politicising (unveiling the political dimension of obstacles towards TC) and embedding (bringing TC into the economy, social practices and policy). 

3) A focus on achieving impact through a ToTC approach, which led us to establish an Influencer & Stakeholder Board. Close alliance with the science-policy interfaces and interproject collaboration suit our vision well.

Proyect URL
https://www.biotraces.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

STICHTING WAGENINGEN RESEARCH (WR)
GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET (UGOT)
CENTRO DE ESTUDOS SOCIAIS (CES)
OKOLOGIAI KUTATOKOZPONT (CER)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
MYKOLO ROMERIO UNIVERSITETAS (MRU)
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA (UNICT)
UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE (UT)
UNIVERSITATEA BABES BOLYAI (UBB)
EUROPEAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION INSTITUTE (ESCI) GGMBH (ESCI)
CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS AMBIENTALES (CEA)

BridgingVALUES

“Just” Conservation? Bridging values for equitable biodiversity governance

The main objective of the project is to inform effective and equitable transformative conservation governance. This will be done by generating new conceptual and empirical insights about how EU driven BES conservation and development discourses and policies affect people and BES at the local level within priority conservation landscapes.

We also aim to utilise novel methods for understanding plural values through co-production of knowledge. In particular BridgingVALUES aims: - To trace the (re)construction and (re)translation of EU conservation and development discourses, policies and financial flows by different actors and interests in high priority conservation and multifunctional landscapes within the EU and the GS, and their effects on equity and wellbeing outcomes. - To theoretically analyse the dynamic interplay of highly visible (e.g., instrumental) values in the EU about BES and those that are less visible in the EU but more pervasive in the GS (e.g., relational values), and to translate the BridgingVALUES conceptual framework into testable hypotheses. - To empirically assess local level equity impacts and compare plural values, worldviews and desired futures across the case studies in Europe and the GS, as well as the role of contextual (e.g., ecological, socio-political, economic, and cultural) factors that lead to differential impacts from EU led conservation and development flows. - To co-produce visions for transformative change (including transformative governance) pathways at local level both in the context of the EU and of the GS, associated with possible shifts in conservation values, norms and goals stemming from the discourses and targets associated with overarching agreements (e.g. SDGs, climate agreements, post 2020 biodiversity framework). - To develop an operationalizable framework about participatory co-production of knowledge and action-based transformative science that targets equity in conservation.

Time Frame
2022 - 2025

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Project PCI2022-134982-2 funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR

DIAMOND

Delivering the next generation of open integrated assessment models for net-zero, sustainable development

Recent literature has underlined the interplay among climate mitigation, adaptation, and finance, as well as between climate action and other development agendas, including sustainable resource use, human development and equity, and environmental pressures.

Such an interconnected policy environment requires an integrated ecosystem of disciplines, methods, and tools. Despite the significant evolution of integrated assessment models (IAMs) in the last decade, there remain several criticisms on their design, use, and adequacy to respond to unaddressed and emerging questions in the light of the Paris Agreement and net-zero ambition. These include openness, legitimacy, and ownership, as well as technical feasibility to represent demand-side and broader societal transformations, cross-sectoral interactions, physical impacts and adaptation, climate finance and labour dynamics, and other sustainability goals. DIAMOND will update, upgrade, and fully open six IAMs that are emblematic in scientific and policy processes, improving their sectoral and technological detail, spatiotemporal resolution, and geographic granularity. It will further enhance modelling capacity to assess the feasibility and desirability of Paris-compliant mitigation pathways, their interplay with adaptation, circular economy, and other SDGs, their distributional and equity effects, and their resilience to extremes, as well as robust risk management and investment strategies. This will be done via integration of tools and insights from psychology, finance research, behavioural and labour economics, operational research, and physical science. We will develop a transdisciplinary scientific approach to legitimise the implementation process and co-create research questions that stretch the frontiers of climate science, as well as establish vibrant communities of practice to transparently open model enhancements and to develop capacities, thereby lowering the entrance barriers to the established IAM community

Proyect URL
https://climate-diamond.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

BC3 contribution

The Role of BC3 in DIAMOND is primarily to develop GCAM-Europe, a new sub-model that functions within the global open-source and community-driven GCAM model. Apart from that, BC3 will lead WP3 on model development, streamlining developments in all models of the consortium as well as links with other WPs.

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

INSTITUTE OF COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTER SYSTEMS (ICCS)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
KRATENA KURT (CESAR)
CICERO SENTER FOR KLIMAFORSKNING (CICERO)
THE CYPRUS INSTITUTE (CYI)
ENERGY ENGINEERING ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT SYSTEMS MODELING AND ANALYSIS SRL (E4SMA)
HOLISTIC IKE (HOLISTIC)
UNIVERSIDAD PONTIFICIA COMILLAS (COMILLAS)
ISTITUTO DI STUDI PER L'INTEGRAZIONE DEI SISTEMI (I.S.I.S) -SOCIETA'COOPERATIVA (ISINNOVA)
SEURECO SOCIETE EUROPEENNE D'ECONOMIE SARL (SEURECO)
UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT (UM)
ESMIA CONSULTANTS INC. (ESMIA)
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND FOUNDATIION INC (USMF)

NBSoil

Nature based solutions for soil management

NBSOIL (Nature Based Solutions for Soil Management) is a four-year project coordinated by the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation (PL). Its overall objective is to design an attractive blended learning programme to enable soil advisors to implement a holistic vision of soil health through Nature Based Solutions (NBS) and collaborate effectively across different temporal and spatial scales.

NBSOIL will focus on 6 multifunctional NBS categories to develop a holistic approach to land management and soil health fully in line with the IUCN Global Standard for NBS (IUCN, 2020): organic fertilisers from locally available biowastes, cover crops, paludiculture, forest diversification, bioremediation, and blue - green infrastructure in urban and periurban areas. NBSOIL builds on previous research results and available Open Source technology to deliver the following NBSOIL thematic packs: Knowledge base, Academy,Soil Health assessment, monitoring and mapping resources, Policy Navigator, and Marketplace. Approximately 300 participants from 8 countries (PL, AT, CH, UK, FR, NL, IT, ES) are expected to complete the full 2 years training offered in 6 languages (English, Polish, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish). The 2 years training programme will provide an immersive, interactive, flexible learning experience, through an introductory MOOC and four advanced modules on 1. Soil and NBS, 2. Living Labs facilitation, 3. Digital tools for Soil Health monitoring and 4.Improving soil related decision making in business and policy, and a Final Project. The NBSOIL consortium will deliver Impact and contribute decisively to achieve the Soil Health Mission by mainstreaming NBS knowledge and advice for soil management, providing Soil Health Living Labs facilitators, making soil monitoring and mapping tech user friendly and inclusive and embedding soil care across all land management and land related decision making processes.

Proyect URL
https://nbsoil.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 6 Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems

Acknowledgement

Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

INSTYTUT UPRAWY NAWOZENIA I GLEBOZNAWSTWA, PANSTWOWY INSTYTUT BADAWCZY (IUNG-PIB)
UNIVERSITAET FUER BODENKULTUR WIEN (BOKU)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
AGRISAT IBERIA SL (AGRISAT)
REVOLVE (REVOLVE)
CENTRUM DORADZTWA ROLNICZEGO W BRWINOWIE (CDR)
CARBONE FERTILE CENTRE NATIONAL D AGROECOLOGIE (CNA)
INSTITUTO TECNICO AGRONOMICO PROVINCIAL SA (ITAP)
LANDESKAMMER FUER LAND UND FORTWIRTSCHAFT IN STEIERMARK (CAFS)
ALCHEMIA-NOVA GMBH (ALCN)
SIEC BADAWCZA LUKASIEWICZ-INSTYTUTLOTNICTWA (IL)
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TORINO (UNITO)
STICHTING AERES GROEP (AERES)

HOBE BC3

One Health observatory lighthouse: extended one health Living Lab

HOBE@BC3 aims to study how climate change and pollution modifies the impacts of coastal pathogens on human/animal/plant health, encompassing the analysis of human behavior and socio-economic activities. In order to carry out this analysis, HOBE@BC3 will (i) design a conceptual framework for Extended One Health, (ii) facilitate knowledge coproduction with cognitive mapping in the study area of Plentzia Bay, (iii) co-design a One Health Living Lab with key stakeholders.

We will propose a new definition of One Health, incorporating other influential concepts based on EcoHealth and Planetary Health, which will allow expanding the narrow focus on disease, to incorporate justice, equity and other socio-demographic factors. A scoping literature review focused on coastal pathogens and the extended One Health, will allow a categorization of factors based on DPSEEA model, encompassing drivers, pressures, reservoirs, contextual factors (facilitating the transmission and influencing vulnerability), exposure pathways, impacts and actions. Finally, all the produced knowledge will allow building influence diagrams to extract interlinkages among these factors, and thus mapping multiple exposures and multiple impacts. These influence diagrams will be the basis to identify key causeeffect relations and areas that require a deeper analysis within the case study location. The estuary of Plentzia is an ideal study case where rich ecosystems meet with intensive human activities (urban settlements, hospital, recreational and leisure activities especially in the summer, squid fishery, agriculture). These activities create environmental pressures (e.g. through discharges of emerging contaminants from treatment plants) modifying local water quality (such as pathogens). This modification then negatively impacts biodiversity and human exposure (recreational activities and food). In order to facilitate knowledge co-production with stakeholders and experts, Fuzzy Cognitive Maps will be elicited for a deeper understanding of local contextual knowledge on the pathogen - One Health relationships in the study area of Plentzia. Individual interviews and focus groups will be carried out with local scientists familiar with the case study site (meteorologists, microbiologists, toxicologists, chemists, sociologists) as well as with local/regional stakeholders and agents (municipality, local hospital, water agency, environmental agency). Each interview (map) will provide a unique view and understanding of the system functioning. These maps are then digitialised and used in simulations where one can compute how forcing one of the nodes (e.g. by implementing an adaptation measure) impacts other nodes of the network. The Living Lab is conceived as a living knowledge platform for multi-perspective analysis, discussion and collaboration among experts, stakeholders, and academia, intended to function beyond the project lifetime. The Living Lab is a collaborative network of agents, and will be facilitated by an online internet platform where the knowledge generated through the project will be made publicly available. The Living Lab intends to provide evidence of the added value of the extended One Health perspective, promote awareness of One Health and propose solutions for adaptation.

Time Frame
2022 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

ADJUST

Advancing the understanding of challenges, policy options and measures to achieve a just EU energy transition

AdJUST is a transdisciplinary European consortium whose objective is to achieve a step change in societal understanding of the distributive repercussions of the transition to climate neutrality, and to identify effective and actively-supported policy interventions to accompany climate action so that no-one is left behind. AdJUST combines research approaches from complementary disciplines with a continuous social dialogue, ensuring that the project practices open science, models procedural justice, and builds understanding, trust and capacity among citizens and other stakeholders concerning the transition to climate neutrality.

AdJUST engages European public bodies, industry, civil society and researchers?i.e. the quadruple helix to design and promote a shared vision, inspiring them towards the common goal of achieving climate neutrality. It relies on state-of-the-art economic assessment tools, statistical analysis, and research approaches from other Social Sciences & Humanities disciplines?including political science, business management, public administration, political theory, philosophy and ethics?to generate methodologically-sound research results on the full range of challenges of the just transition. These comprise technical, economic, and social/equity dimensions for firms, workers, households and public bodies, and the potential distributional impacts of the EU Green Deal, NextGenerationEU and Fit for 55. 

AdJUST produces a set of actionable and context-specific policy recommendations complementing the Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund to effectively manage competitiveness and distributional trade-offs associated with the transition across Europe, and in specific countries and sectors. Moving well beyond standard public opinion analysis of preferences for climate action, AdJUST probes the conditions under which households, firms, and unions will actively support these initiatives to transition Europe to carbon neutrality.

Proyect URL
https://adjust-project.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

Acknowledgement

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

FONDAZIONE CENTRO EURO-MEDITERRANEOSUI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI (FONDAZIONE CMCC)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
STIFTELSEN FRISCHSENTERET FOR SAMFUNNSOKONOMISK FORSKNING (FRISCH)
MERCATOR RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON GLOBAL COMMONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE (MCC) GGMBH (MCC)
ASOCIATIA PUR SI SIMPLU VERDE (PSV)
INSTITUTE FOR EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY (IEEP)
OSTERREICHISCHE FORSCHUNGSSTIFTUNG FUR INTERNATIONALE ENTWICKLUNG (OEFSE)
INSTYTUT OCHRONY SRODOWISKA - PANSTWOWY INSTYTUT BADAWCZY (IOSPIB)
E3-MODELLING AE (E3-MODELLING AE)

BLUEADAPT

Reducing climate based health risks in blue environments: adapting to the climate change impacts on coastal pathogens

Protecting human health by understanding how climate change can impact pathogens and antimicrobial drug resistant bacteria in coastal waters.

Climate change and environmental pollution could be making waterborne pathogens (such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites) more dangerous in ways that we don’t yet fully understand. To prevent illness and disease, we need to know how people could be exposed to different pathogens in coastal environments.We are investigating how climate change is enabling pathogens to evolve and multiply, and how people are at risk. Our findings will help to inform the most effective ways for Europe to adapt through policy and innovation. BlueAdapt has been funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and UK Research and Innovation

Proyect URL
https://blueadapt.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.,RG 5.1 One Health

Acknowledgement

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101057764 and by the UKRI/HM Government

Partners

UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI
FONDAZIONE CENTRO EURO-MEDITERRANEOSUI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI
ISTITUTO SUPERIORE DI SANITA
THEN TRY THIS

BEEWARE

Biodiversity-stability relationships under different perturbation scenarios

A strong body of literature has demonstrated the positive effects of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning, as well as for the stability of several ecosystem processes. However, most of these approaches have focused on a single trophic level, ignoring the fact that biodiversity occurs across several organizational levels (from populations to ecosystems) and involves multiple interactions between species.

Therefore, the understanding we have for one trophic level might not extend to more complex ensembles. Here, we suggest using plant-pollinator interaction data collected across a number of spatially-independent meta-communities through time, to explore the relatioship between biodiversity and stability at different organizational scales, from species diversity to interaction composition or community structure. We further propose a number of experimental approaches that will change species diversity levels, arising from a number of scenarios that are plausible given current climate change and practices regarding managed honeybees in protected areas, to evaluate whether and how baseline biodiversity-stability relationships might change. 

Our project aims to answer the following specific questions: 

1. How does biodiversity at different organizational levels (from species to ecosystems) affect the stability of ecosystem processes? 

2. How does a change in species diversity and species composition shift the diversity-stability relationships? 

3. How will projected climate change affect these diversity-stability relationships? 

By connecting empirical data with complex theoretical models, BEEWARE will represent a fundamental step to improve our ability to predict the outcome of ecosystem disturbances and their impact on community structure and function, while focusing on multiple levels of biodiversity: from species, interactions and communities to functions.

Time Frame
2022 - 2025

Status
Extended

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

BC3 contribution

Leader, idea development and project management

Acknowledgement

Proyecto PID2021-127900NB-I00 financiado por MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 y por FEDER, UE

CLEVER

Creating leverage to enhance biodiversity outcomes of global biomass trade

CLEVER develops and applies a novel integrated approach to better understand and quantify biodiversity impacts of trade in raw and processed biomass under alternative value chain governance arrangements. The project focuses on internationally traded agricultural and forest-based commodities for pre-dominantly non-food uses, such as soy and forest products, as well as biomass from sea.

A regional focus lies on EU imports from South America and Africa. Our objectives are to: 

1. Improve our understanding of how biomass trade is linked to biodiversity outcomes and co-benefits in exporting and importing regions. 

2. Provide empirical evidence for causal relationships between value chain governance initiatives and biodiversity outcomes as well as related policy spillovers. 

3. Co-design concepts and value propositions for innovative interventions that exploit leverage points enabled by improved value chain transparency. 

Achievements under objectives 1 and 2 are measured and verified in terms of high-level academic output and outreach material. Achievements under objective 3 are measured and verified in terms of participation in stakeholder workshops, related outreach material, and the scope of implemented pilot activities. Methodologically the consortium contributes by integrating qualitative approaches, quantitative data-science, life cycle analyses (e.g. in footprinting), and causal inference with trade and land use modeling to improve the evidence base for transformative biodiversity policy design. Based on this, the consortium develops stakeholder-specific recommendations for innovation action towards aligning environmental/biodiversity policies with value chain governance initiatives.

Time Frame
2022 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon,RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Partners

RHEINISCHE FRIEDRICH-WILHELMS-UNIVERSITAT BONN (UBO)
INTERNATIONALES INSTITUT FUER ANGEWANDTE SYSTEMANALYSE (IIASA)
ALBERT-LUDWIGS-UNIVERSITAET FREIBURG (ALU-FR)
UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA (UPV)
EUROPEAN FOREST INSTITUTE (EFI)
ASOCIACION BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
STIFTELSEN THE STOCKHOLM ENVIRONMENT INSTITUTE (SEI)
UNIVERSITE DE DSCHANG (UDS)
BONN.REALIS EV (Bonn.realis)

IAM COMPACT

Expanding integrated assessment modelling: comprehensive and comprehensible science for sustainable, co-created climate action

Neither the first round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) nor currently implemented climate policies are on track to meeting the Paris Agreement´s objectives. Parties are expected to increase their ambition and produce new NDCs covering the post-2030 period.

The design of a multi-dimensional set of policy measures that comprise countries? climate policy agendas is supported by equally diverse integrated assessment modelling (IAM) activities. Notwithstanding the recent progress in the IAM literature and scenario space, the modelling world has fallen short of its promise to include non-scientists in its process; to account for individual choices and lifestyle changes that are indirectly narrated as assumptions not interacting with the vividly modelled technology-economy-environment-policy flows; and to place climate action as a cross-cutting theme in the sustainability spectrum. 

IAM COMPACT will support the assessment of global climate goals, progress, and feasibility space, as well as the design of the next round of NDCs and policy planning beyond 2030 for major emitters and non-high-income countries. We will use a diverse ensemble of models, tools, and insights from social and political sciences and operations research, and will integrate bodies of knowledge to cocreate the research process and enhance transparency, robustness, and policy relevance. We will explore the role of structural changes in major emitting sectors and of political, behaviour, and social aspects in mitigation; quantify factors promoting or hindering climate neutrality; and account for extreme scenarios, to deliver a range of global and national pathways that are environmentally effective, economically viable, politically feasible, and socially desirable. 

In doing so, we will fully account for COVID-19 impacts and recovery strategies, and align climate action with broader sustainability goals, while developing technical capacity and promoting ownership in non-high-income countries.

Proyect URL
https://www.iam-compact.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

Acknowledgement

The IAM COMPACT project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 101056306.

Partners

ETHNICON METSOVION POLYTECHNION (NTUA)
AALTO KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR (Aalto)
AALBORG UNIVERSITET (AAU)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
BRUEGEL AISBL* (Bruegel)
FUNDACION CARTIF (CARTIF)
CICERO SENTER FOR KLIMAFORSKNING (CICERO)
E3-MODELLING AE (E3M)
KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN (KTH)
POLITECNICO DI MILANO (POLIMI)
UNIVERSITY OF PIRAEUS RESEARCH CENTER (UPRC)
UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID (UVa)
WUPPERTAL INSTITUT FUR KLIMA, UMWELT, ENERGIE GGMBH (WI)
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT (IIMA)
TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY (THU)
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND FOUNDATIION INC (USMF)
ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY (AAiT)
INTERNATIONAL CIVIC ORGANISATION KYIV ECONOMICS INSTITUTE (KEI)
RAJA RATA UNIVERSITY OF SRI LANKA (RUSL)
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MOMBASA (TUM)

GIFTS

Global interlinkages in food trade systems

Food demand is largely met with imports, connecting producers to consumers through global supply chains. The GIFTS project examines the land use spillovers and GHG emissions from future food demand scenarios by considering trade-mediated teleconnections between food consumption, agricultural expansion, and climate change. GIFTS builds on a physical multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model that will be extended to include emissions from agricultural production and land use change, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. The overall goal is to assist policy-making and inform consumers’ decisions towards more resilient, circular, and sustainable agro-food systems towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Food demand is increasingly satisfied with imported products from distant locations. This makes countries and consumers more vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and price spikes, challenging food security. Trade in food is also associated with the displacement of resource-intensive activities from industrialised to developing countries, influencing the distribution of land uses and related impacts on a global scale. The goal of the project GIFTS is to develop an integrated framework for the assessment of the long-term sustainability of food consumption, capturing the global interconnections between agricultural expansion, crop management, climate change and food security. The methodology departs from a physical Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model developed by the host institution, with an unprecedented level of detail in agro-food products. I propose to improve this model by developing environmental extensions with spatially-explicit carbon stocks across land uses and greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production. Co-product flows between crop, livestock and energy sectors will also be implemented to represent reuse and recovery. The extended MRIO table will be used to assess the mitigation potential of climate change adaptation strategies along global supply chains, considering increased resource efficiency and land use change. The project involves training on the application of MRIO analysis for environmental evaluation as well as in spatial analysis at the host institution. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is involved in the secondment, providing training on the estimation of livestock emissions and fostering inter-sectoral research exchange between academia and decision-makers. Overall, GIFTS can greatly promote my interdisciplinary research career for providing science-based evidence to assist policy-making towards a more resilient, sustainable and circular society in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Time Frame
2022 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

BC3 contribution

BC3 leads and is in charge of the entire project, which consists of six work packages, including project management and coordination, as well as dissemination, exploitation and communication of results.

Acknowledgement

GIFTS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreement no. 101029457.

MARBEFES

Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning leading to ecosystem services

The European Union and its Member States (MSs) have a fundamental need to understand how biodiversity and ecosystem functioning must be maintained to ensure that they deliver ecosystem services, goods and benefits, which in turn must be sustainably used by society.

Central to this, and as the raison d??Tre of this call, the MSs need to value these natural and social capital aspects of ecosystems. The overall aim of MARBEFES is to determine the links between the biodiversity and functioning of coastal and marine ecosystems and the resulting ecosystem services and societal goods and benefits. In this it will achieve ecological and socioeconomic valuation through a validated set of innovative tools in a distributed toolbox (TRL 6) to enhance policy and governance to secure benefits for current and future generation. We will progress substantially beyond the current state-of-the-art understanding of the causes and consequences of the maintenance, loss and gain of biodiversity and ecological and economic value and the repercussions of this for the management and governance of European seas. Involving 23 highly experienced partners, the project outputs and outcomes are based on developing and validating a set of ecological, economic and socio-cultural valuation tools using existing and new information and data in 12 Broad Belt Transect case studies. These cover the breadth of European marine biodiversity, from the Arctic to semi-tropical areas, across dominant habitats and iconic species, and from shallow to deep areas and encompass a range of socio-economic contexts. As such, and through stakeholder co-creation for policy relevance, MARBEFES shows the tools to value different natural capital resources and inform planning from financial allocations to management and with monetary and non-monetary benefits. In this, the project advances our knowledge through linking marine biodiversity and its ecological structure and functioning to ecological and economic valuation.

Proyect URL
https://marbefes.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 6 Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems

Acknowledgement

MARBEFES - MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning leading to Ecosystem Services MARBEFES project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no 101060937

Partners

INSTYTUT OCEANOLOGII POLSKIEJ AKADEMII NAUK (IO PAN)
E-SCIENCE EUROPEAN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEM RESEARCH (LW ERIC)
AKVAPLAN NIVA AS (APN)
STICHTING HUMMEL FOUNDATION FOR SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS (HuFoSS)
KLAIPEDOS UNIVERSITETAS (KU)
TARTU ULIKOOL (UTARTU)
UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA (USAL)
CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE (CNR)
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN (UCD)
INSTITUTUL NATIONAL DE CERCETARE-DEZVOLTARE PENTRU GEOLOGIE SI GEOECOLOGIE MARINA-GEOECOMAR (GEOECOMAR)
UNIVERSIDAD DE CANTABRIA (UC)
AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS (CSIC),
ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM FUR POLAR- UND MEERESFORSCHUNG (AWI)
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO (UNITN)
ABO AKADEMI (ABO)
HELLENIC CENTRE FOR MARINE RESEARCH (HCMR)
VLAAMS INSTITUUT VOOR DE ZEE (VLIZ)
NOVA BLUE ENVIRONMENT (NBE)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)

MAIA

Maximising impact and accessibility of European Climate Research

MAIA will act as an impact multiplier by providing social structures, technological and outreach activities to accompany, potentiate and help maximise the impact of climate research projects funded under Horizon Europe. MAIA?s consortium has been constituted as a response from a group of coordinators and core partners from seven H2020 precursor projects in climate change research (BINGO, BRIGAID, CLARITY, Connecting Nature, DRIVER+, PLACARD and RESCCUE).

During the execution of our projects, driven by the EC?s advice to identify synergies and spark collaboration, we liaised and detected a clear need for increased connectivity and a more robust approach to synergies management as means to unlock more meaningful and impact-oriented interactions. MAIA pivots around connectivity as a key enabling factor for an effective outreach. Therefore, we are envisioning specific actions for enhancing i) the connectivity of existing communities (consolidation and activation of a Pan-European community of problem owners, solution providers, and enablers); ii) the connectivity of knowledge and technological infrastructure (creation of the MAIA Portal where endusers can find whatever they need even without previously knowing about the platforms where these data and information is stored); and iii) the connectivity of the EU climate research (coordinating an EU climate change research Cluster). Communication and Dissemination activities of the EU climate change research projects will be reinforced and amplified by our active outreach campaign, aiming towards the democratisation of climate knowledge. Moreover, MAIA develops a comprehensive crossproject exploitation-support programme. MAIA also addresses awareness raising, the strengthening of the science-policy and science-civil society interfaces, and the support for climate action and sustainable behaviours through several actions dealing with active dialogue supported through community engagement activities and the use of SSH.

Proyect URL
https://maia-project.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

MAIA project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 101056935.

Partners

BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
BRIGAID CONNECT (BRC)
ATHINA-EREVNITIKO KENTRO KAINOTOMIAS STIS TECHNOLOGIES TIS PLIROFORIAS, TON EPIKOINONION KAI TIS GNOSIS (ARC)
HORIZON NUA INNOVATION (HNUA)
SOCIEDADE PORTUGUESA DE INOVACAO CONSULTADORIA EMPRESARIAL E FOMENTO DA INOVACAO SA (SPI)
AQUATEC PROYECTOS PARA EL SECTOR DEL AGUA SA (AQUA)
AIT AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GMBH (AIT)
SMART CITIES CONSULTING GMBH (SCC)
REGIONS4 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (R4)
INMEDIA SOLUTIONS SL (INM)
THAT'S ADVERTISING SOCIEDAD LIMITADA (TAD)

SSH CENTRE

Social Sciences & Humanities for Climate, Energy and Transport Research Excellence

SSH CENTRE is a €3m Horizon Europe project representing the cross-European Centre of Research Excellence for Climate-Energy-Mobility Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH)

Several of the axes of the SSH CENTRE Project involve Transdisciplinarity: climate-energy-mobility transitions need approaches that engage with diverse stakeholders to create a deep and meaningful dialogue right across society; Epistemic experimentation: climate-energy-mobility solutions that currently implemented tend to reflect a relatively narrow range of epistemic cultures (i.e. ways of developing knowledge); SSH CENTRE encourages experimentation to widen this range; Research-policy brokerage: translating SSH knowledge into policy action requires the development of brokerage capacities which are currently limited & Engagement to influence strategy: we define true engagement as involving the ability for stakeholders to meaningfully influence outcomes

Proyect URL
https://sshcentre.eu/

Time Frame
2022 - 2026

Status
Active

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

BC3 contribution

BC3 has contributed toward working on inclusive Research Geographies in the Social Sciences and Humanities and has co-hosted a workshop with Wikitoki on “Southern perspectives in different Research Geographies” and looks for future ways of cross-fertilisation within the three currently fragmented domains of climate, mobility and energy. BC3 has led the editorial Climate and Change with an open-access book (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-72055-0) on Strengthening European Climate Policy with Governance Recommendations from Innovative Interdisciplinary Collaborations. BC3 has also steered the Valencia Workshop on Knowledge Brokerage with Energy Cities and led the Cross-fertilisation dialogue aid to help both SSH and STEM researchers navigate interdisciplinary challenges by blending methods, enriching problem definitions, and integrating technical evaluations with social and policy implications. BC3 has also been responsible for reflecting on diverse participatory scoping tools such as collective deliberation, living labs and citizens’ assemblies.

Acknowledgement

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101069529 and from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant No 10038991].

Partners

Anglia Ruskin University
Acento Comunicación
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Knowledge and Innovation
European Energy Research Alliance
Global Change Research Institute
Communication consultancy
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Basque Centre For Climate Change
Friends of Europe, Energy Cities
Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
DuneWorks

MENDindi

Understanding the uncertainties and their role in the coproduction of indigenous knowledge about the ?grafting of glaciers? for water security: the case of High Mountains in Asia Asia (MENDindi) Entendiendo las incertidumbres y su rol en l

In the High Mountain region of Asia, work to adapt to climate change presents a major challenge both now and in the future, particularly on issues concerning water management, and the continuing degradation and loss of glaciers.

While scientific knowledge on the subject is still limited, local cultures, which are themselves the most vulnerable to climate change, maintain ancestral knowledge on the cultivation of artificial glaciers, which can help ensure water security. But being able to apply these solutions will depend not only on the technical and physical knowledge of how to graft glaciers and their implementation at scales that can make a difference to water flows in the region, but also on the coordination and possibilities of the local communities who will be affected by these changes. 

The main objective of MENDindi is to identify what are the most important sources of uncertainty associated with the local practice of glacier grafting as an integral part of water management in the Karakoram and western Himalayan ranges, considering that there are both knowledge deficits and also many different and valid ways of knowing. To achieve this end MENDindi will adopt a conceptual framework of uncertainties that recognises that uncertainty refers not only to knowledge deficits of epistemic and ontological origin, but also to the differences in interpretation of reality by different actors and the resulting ambiguities.

In this conceptualisation, ambiguity constitutes a distinct type of uncertainty, arising from the simultaneous presence of multiple valid and sometimes conflicting ways of understanding a system and framing its problems. MENDindi will identify uncertainties in knowledge co-production associated with glacier grafting and also strategies for dealing with them in the Karakoram and Western Himalayas. The project hopes to return recommendations to local communities that are practical and aimed at improving their water management in the short, medium and long term.

Time Frame
2022 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 1. Climate Basis,RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

ALICE2

Improving the management of Atlantic landscapes accounting for biodiversity and ecosystem services

Capitalization phase of the ALICE Project funded by INTERREG Atlantic Area Programme with the application code: EAPA_261/2016

ALICE is a project funded in 75% by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the umbrella of INTERREG Atlantic Area with the application code: EAPA_261/2016. The 11 partners involved in the project are from Portugal, Spain, Northern Ireland, France and the United Kingdom. The three-year project started in November 2017 will cost 3 million euros with 25% covered by the beneficiary partners.

The main goal is to promote sustainable investments in Blue-Green Infrastructure Networks (BGINs) through identification of the benefits of Ecosystem Services delivered at the terrestrial-aquatic and land-sea interface in the Atlantic Region.

The activities will be developed by:

1. combining a range of satellite images, GIS data and modelling frameworks to map aquatic and terrestrial vegetation formations and ecological processes;
2. enhancing the predictive capacity by using a multi-model platform;
3. participatory learning approaches to engage local stakeholders.

ALICE will also identify economic and social barriers to the implementation of Blue-Green Infrastructure Networks in each of the four case studies of the project and it will provide robust scientific, socioeconomic and environmental policy support for the effective implementation of future BGINs.

The team includes scientists, universities, research institutes, local and national governments, NGOs and SMEs.

Time Frame
2022 - 2023

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 6 Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems

BC3 contribution

Model integration and tooling of stakeholders for participatory decision making

CircAgric-GHG

CircAgric-GHG: Strategies for Circular Agriculture to reduce GHG emissions within and between farming systems across an agro-ecological gradient

Over the past decades, European farms have trended towards specialisation and high per ha yields but have become increasingly dependent on external inputs to compensate for declining recycling of nutrients. Meanwhile, farms in sub-Saharan Africa less specialized, have low inputs and yields and much higher vulnerability to climate change compared with European farms.

More efficient (re)cycling of resources (nutrients, water, energy and land) across the agri-food sector and enhanced resilience, is imperative to deliver food security whilst respecting ecological boundaries and rural livelihoods. In Europe, re-coupling (direct and/or remote) of livestock and crop systems could play an important role in more efficient (re)cycling of resources across livestock and crops, and food value chains. In Africa, integrating sustainability and resilience objectives with enhanced food security could avoid some of the trade-offs currently experienced in Europe (e.g., high GHG emissions and N pollution). 

CircAgric-GHG represents a consortium of 17 world-leading researchers from 8 countries with expertise in livestock, cropping systems, farm and landscape modelling, LCA and ecosystem services (ES) evaluation. The consortium will draw upon state-of-the-art knowledge, research methods and models to assess how circular practices can deliver sustainable food systems. Using farm typologies as a baseline, the extent of existing circular practice implementation will be evaluated. Promising practices to enhance circularity will be proposed across typologies and agro-ecological zones. High-resolution modelling of resource cycling and GHG emissions at farm and landscape level will be undertaken using process- and farm models, with remote sensing of particularly uncertain land use emission fluxes using novel satellite and drone technology. LCA will be applied to integrate modelling outputs into environmental footprints of food production, developing a novel framework for future projects. Farm-scale modelling will also inform a marginal abatement cost curve and a decision support tool, enabling robust comparison of GHG abatement efficacy of specific circular practices. Meanwhile, stakeholder dialogue via workshops and focus groups will identify systemic lock-ins and levers pertinent to wide scale deployment of circular practices, culminating in a Transition Roadmap. 

Scenario analysis will then integrate farm-scale abatement with macro-resource flow and land use change consequences of promising practises. Consequential LCA will be applied to evaluate the technical potential for circular scenarios to meet 2030 Farm-to-Fork and 2050 climate neutrality targets, with screening of major ES effects. Results will be made available in an open-access database. Project partners will engage their stakeholder networks and outreach organisations to leverage impact through transdisciplinary research, maintaining dialogue via social media, workshops and focus groups, as well as traditional academic channels. Emphasis will be placed on the diversity of circular practices needed to improve resource efficiency and sustainability, and GHG abatement across mixed crop livestock systems at different scales (farm to international). 

The CircAgric-GHG consortium are ideally positioned to deliver impact, spanning a diverse range of farm typologies and agro-ecological zones, representing a wealth of expertise across alternative feeds, ruminant methane mitigation, mixed-species swards, protein-crop rotations, dairy-beef system interconnections, biological waste- and co-product recycling and on-farm bioenergy production. CircAgric-GHG will draw upon data from existing projects, insight from ongoing stakeholder dialogue, and a basket of state-of-the-art scientific methods, in a strategic manner to assess relevant practices at the appropriate scale to shape sustainable food system transitions across Europe and Africa over the coming decades.

Time Frame
2021 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

GOBERNADAPT II

Gobernanza del riesgo y adaptación al cambio climático: Explorando sinergias entre Dakar y Saint-Louis, Senegal

Generate information and develop inclusive participatory and learning processes to improve resilience and climate risk governance in Dakar and Saint Louis - Governadapt II? with the objective of generating information and developing inclusive participatory and learning processes to improve resilience and climate risk governance in Dakar and Saint Louis.

This will be achieved by (1) creating a knowledge community on climate change and resilience to serve as a space for experimentation, discussion, learning and knowledge exchange between actors in Dakar and Saint Louis; (2) improving risk governance and resilience in Saint-Louis, and identifying good practices applicable in Dakar and other contexts in Senegal through an inclusive process of co-creation with local actors and communities; and (3) stakeholders at local and regional levels will be trained in understanding and managing climate risk, leading to an understanding of current and future risks, as well as the assessment of adaptation measures.

Time Frame
2021 - 2023

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

Partners

BC3 Basque Centre for Climate Change-Klima Aldaketa Ikergai
Fundación Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de Cantabria, IHCantabria

ATLANTIS

Development of soil-smart forestry practices and of early vulnerability diagnosis tools to improve soil conservation and long-term stability of Iberian Atlantic forests EU policies

The forestry model at which the Atlantic forests of the Iberian Peninsula have been subjected to in the last century have generated a forest dominated by monospecific plantations of exotic species (especially Eucalyptus globulus from Australia and Pinus radiata from California, US).

This trend has perpetuated the loss of both plant and animal biodiversity and the proliferation of forest diseases and fires, along with important losses of soil functioning, soil biodiversity, and soil organic matter (soil erosion), which have increased in the incidence of floods and landslides. The ATLANTIS coordinated project aims to develop the knowledge to reverse these current trends that cast doubt on the long-term soil conservation of the Iberian Atlantic Forests, the stability of these forest ecosystems, and their sustainable provision of key ecosystem services. 

The overall aim of ATLANTIS is to secure a future sustainable provision of ecosystem services from Iberian Atlantic Forests by stimulating soil-smart forestry (SSF) practices and develop early vulnerability diagnosis tools to optimize the long-term conservation of forest soils and forest stability. Looking ahead of the future challenges that the Atlantic forest of the Iberian Peninsula will be facing, the overall aims of the two sub-projects that conform ATLANTIS will be: to stimulate the implementation of soil-smart forestry (SSF) practices aiming to improve the long-term stability and long-term mitigation capacity of currently threatened Atlantic Iberian Forests (SMARTSOIL) and to develop early-integrated tool arrays for detecting health transitions in the context of current versus sustainable forestry practices in the face of climate-change effects (SMARTHEALTH). By studying indicators of soil health (e.g. soil organic matter, soil physical and hydraulic properties, soil functioning, and soil biodiversity), of tree physiological health (e.g. secondary growth, defoliation, leaf ecometabolites, fine root biomass and traits, leaf traits and physiological responses), and of ecosystem health (e.g. regeneration, productivity, soil attributes, functional ecosystem attributes), on a broad spectrum of forests and forestry practices and under drought simulation, ATLANTIS will provide academy and forestry with holistic solutions to achieve sustainable forests and sustainable ecosystem services provision. 

The coordination between the research groups of the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3; Subproyect-1, SMARTSOIL) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU-Subproyect-2, SMARTHEALTH) brings all the expertise needed and it will be essential to successfully fulfill the general aim of the project proposal. These two highly multidisciplinary sub-projects will be enriched with the complementary experience of international experts in different disciplines of knowledge such as dendrochronology, forests science, remote sensing, cheminformatics, plant volatiles, microbial ecology or social conservation. A further aim of ATLANTIS is to have a direct societal impact and engage end-users. Hence, ATLANTIS will stablish a dialogue with local forest owners and the forestry sector to co-create soil-smart forest (SSF) management practices and disturbance risk management tools which will be hopefully translated into future management plans as well as national management policies.

Time Frame
2021 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

Acknowledgement

PID2020-113244GB-C21 Financiado por MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033

UNDUE

Water management and governance under uncertainty: a mediterranean watershed case

Facing uncertainty when making decision choices in water resources management is, and will continue to be, unavoidable. A matter that in addition to the best available scientific knowledge and models, requires deep insights into the social relational processes that underlie decision making.

While this issue is not new, and has been extensively acknowledged in the scholarly literature, however methodological and practical applications for managing uncertainty lag behind. There is still a tendency in characterizing and modelling uncertainties associated with the natural systems focusing in the reduction of deficits of knowledge, while keeping the social and ambiguous aspects separated. Breaking this cycle, is particularly relevant for managing natural resources under climate change, since uncertainties in the factual knowledge base are huge, and framings are multiple and contested. The objective of UNDUE is advancing in the understanding of the role and function of uncertainty in collective decision-making processes in water management, and how uncertainty is approached and handled when making decisions. UNDUE will develop and use innovative participatory modelling approaches and social experimentation to explore the effects of uncertainties in different decision settings. 

In doing so, UNDUE will take a social relational perspective, where uncertainty, beyond being a deficit of knowledge, also includes the ambiguity resulting from the differences in meanings and interpretations that the different actors bring into decision making. Addressing primarily Challenge 6 (Social Sciences and Humanities, and Sciences with and for Society) and secondarily Challenge 5 (Climate Change and use of natural resources), UNDUE will analyze real collective decision-making situations concerning water management and governance in the Spanish Mediterranean semiarid region. Specifically looking at the Mijares watershed, and the reactivation of the water cycle as way to cope with climate change impacts. UNDUE will result in an improved understanding of the effects of uncertainty in water management, particularly in the context of the case study, and a toolkit of concepts, methods, protocols, models and guidance, aiming at supporting collective decision-making processes under uncertainty.

Time Frame
2021 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

Acknowledgement

«Proyectos de I+D+i» ref. PID2020-114944RB-I00 por MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033

NDC ASPECTS

Assessing sectoral perspectives on climate transitions to support the global stocktake and subsequent ndcs

The NDC ASPECTS project will provide inputs to the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement (PA) and support the potential revision of existing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the PA?s parties, as well as development of new NDCs for the post 2030 period.

The project will particularly focus on four sectoral systems that are highly relevant in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions they produce yet have thus far made only limited progress in decarbonization. To advance these transformations will require to understand and leverage the Eigenlogic of those systems and take into account specific transformation challenges. These sectors are transport & mobility (land-based transport and international aviation & shipping), emission intensive industries, buildings, and agriculture, forestry & land-use, including their supply by and interaction with the energy conversion sector. 

For each of those sectors we will undertake ?Sectoral Conversation? to co-create evidence-based narratives with sectoral experts and stakeholders drawing on the consortium?s extensive networks. These narratives can then be translated into global pathways informing the Global Stocktake as well as national pathways for strategically selected countries for each of the four sectors. As an input to the Sectoral Conversations we will systematically assess transformation challenges and opportunities (economic, technological, political/institutional, capacity and awareness), including taking into account experiences with the implementation of the first round of NDCs as well as model-based quantitative analyses. Additionally, we will identify ways and means to improve international governance to enable and facilitate sectoral transformations.

Proyect URL
https://ndc-aspects.eu/

Time Frame
2021 - 2024

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon,RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

The NDC ASPECTS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 101003866.

Partners

WUPPERTAL INSTITUT FUR KLIMA, UMWELT, ENERGIE GGMBH (WI)
VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL (VUB)
FONDATION INSTITUT DE RECHERCHE POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT DURABLE ET LES RELATIONS INTERNATIONALES (IDDRI)
DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUR LUFT - UND RAUMFAHRT EV (DLR)
E3-MODELLING AE (E3M)
BC3 BASQUE CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE - KLIMA ALDAKETA IKERGAI (BC3)
ITA-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO (UEF)
FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS (HSE)
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT (IIMA)
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN (UCT)
YU A IZRAEL INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL CLIMATE AND ECOLOGY (IGCE)
TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY (Tsinghua)
INSTITUT PERTANIAN BOGOR (IPB)
THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF MARYLAND FOUNDATION, INC. (UMD)
HOLISTIC IKE (HOLISTIC)

HoliSoils

Proposal title Holistic management practices, modelling and monitoring for European forest soils

Current knowledge gaps on forest soil processes and lack of a harmonised soil monitoring framework limit the EU’s ability to achieve LULUCF sector climate policy targets by optimising soil and forest management practices. Holistic sustainable management practices are needed to maintain and enhance soil biodiversity and resilience, and to provide various ecosystem services, incl. reduction of soil GHG emissions.

Forest and peatland soils have high climate change mitigation potential, but their contribution is fully not considered in the LULUCF sector’s GHG projections and inventories, because applicable soil modelling and monitoring methods are not established. Currently, nine of the 28 member states have included forest soils in national GHG inventories.

HoliSoils advances knowledge on functions of microbiota in soil nutrient cycling and GHG fluxes and integrates the experimental knowledge into models. HoliSoils develops integrated and harmonised tools for soil monitoring (especially for GHG inventory). HoliSoils identifies and tests management practices reducing GHG emissions on mineral and organic soils, and minimizing soil degradation after disturbances. Empirical knowledge on the processes and responses of management will improve numerical forecasting of soil GHG exchange and adaptation and evaluation of ecosystem services. HoliSoils’ outputs include operational soil GHG estimation methods applicable for GHG inventories in the EU and beyond, next generation soil models on microbiota driven processes of nutrient cycling and GHG fluxes, advanced analytical techniques for assessment of soil microbial diversity and functions resulting climate-smart solutions for holistic soil and forest management. HoliSoils’ impacts will include: reduced uncertainty of soil GHG inventories, aimed at enabling carbon transfer through market mechanism development; enhanced capacity of the EU’s to reach SDG 2030 targets and climate-neutrality by 2050, as set out in the EU Green Deal.

Time Frame
2021 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

BC3 contribution

BC3 will be leading the research on the resilience and vulnerability of European forest soils to natural disturbances. The overall aim is to advance understanding of the responses of European forest soils to natural disturbances, such as summer drought-induced tree mortality coupled with autumn thunderstorm, forest fires, bark beetle outbreaks, and windthrows, by focusing on the mechanisms that regulate the resistance and resilience of soils to disturbances.

Acknowledgement

This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovations programme under Grant Agreement Nº 101000289

Partners

LUONNONVARAKESKUS
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
JOHANN HEINRICH VON THUENEN-INSTITUT, BUNDESFORSCHUNGSINSTITUT FUER LAENDLICHE RAEUME, WALD UND FISCHEREI
STICHTING VU
MIKROBIOLOGICKY USTAV AV CR V.V.I
EUROPEAN FOREST INSTITUTE
STICHTING WAGENINGEN RESEARCH
STICHTING INTERNATIONAL SOIL REFERENCE AND INFORMATION CENTRE
STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET
UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA DIN BRASOV
UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE INVESTIGACION AGROPECUARIA
THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
VYTAUTO DIDZIOJO UNIVERSITETAS

BIDERATU

BIDERATU

The aim of BIDERATU is to research and develop an integrated e3s (energy, economic, environmental and social) modelling system - "Sistema Integrado de Modelización BIDERATU" - aimed at supporting the strategic decision-making of the industrial sector and public administrations in relation to the energy transition towards a circular, low-carbon and sustainable economy in the Basque Country. The BIDERATU Integrated Modelling System. Within the project, BC3 is leading the conceptual design of the BIDERATU Integrated Modelling System and the development of the macroeconomic-multisectoral module.

Towards a circular and low-carbon economy in the Basque Country: Integrated e3s (energy, economic, environmental and social) modelling system aimed at supporting strategic decision-making in the industrial sector and public administrations in relation to the energy transition.  Explain the purpose and opportunity of the project (why and what it is being undertaken for) and specify its main objectives and expected results (at a general level and in terms of publications, patents, consolidation of R&D employment in the participants).
Explain the strategies of the participating entity or entities to which the project responds.
 Describe the contribution and fit of the proposed project with the lines of work of the Basque Government's Science, Technology and Innovation Policy and with the priorities of the smart specialisation strategy set out in the PCTI 2030.

Time Frame
2021 - 2022

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon

Partners

Fundación TECNALIA Research & Innovation
Asociación de Promoción e Investigación Clúster de Energía
Mondragon Goi Eskola Politeknikoa Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta S Coop
Asociación Clúster de Industrias de Medio Ambiente de Euskadi - ACLIMA

UNTWIST

UNTWIST: UNraveling the knoT of the Water-energy-food nexus usIng ecosySTems services

UNTWIST aims at exploring new pathways to operationalize Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus concepts into practice. Despite the urgent need of adopting systemic thinking for the governance of water resource and interconnected sectors has been widely recognized and stressed by EU, several challenges for an effective mainstreaming of such frameworks into policy remain.

These can be largely attributed to the lack of frameworks and tools able to effectively quantify interlinkages and feedbacks between nexus component and related ecosystems and to account for the effect of exogenous drivers of change (e.g. climate change). By combining ESs theories with complex system analysis, UNTWIST aims at contributing to fill these gaps demonstrating, through case studies applications, the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing integrated models supporting the quantification of critical interactions occurring in WEF nexus systems. Ecosystem Services (ESs) flows, being in the centre of the WEF relationships, will be used as common assessment endpoints to disentangle the nexus, thus contributing to reveal potential interdependencies between policy sectors and unlock opportunities for delivering integrated solutions addressing key challenges towards the achievement of interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The research project, which will last 24 months, will be mainly conducted at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in Bilbao (Spain), under the supervision of Professor Ferdinando Villa, while a secondment period, will be performed at GECOsistema (Italy), an environmental consulting based in Rimini. UNTWIST results will be disseminated and the main findings will be communicated with tailored actions to a wide audience, including the academic community, policy makers, industries and the general public.

Time Frame
2021 - 2023

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 6 Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems

Acknowledgement

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie grant agreement No 893103

MASBIO

Sustainable land management practices for the preservation of biodiversity and other ecosystem services in the Mijares basin

MASBIO proposes sustainable land management actions in rural areas of the Mediterranean watersheds to combat water scarcity, soil erosion, and biodiversity decline with the combination of scientific research, traditional and administrative knowledge, and artificial intelligence.

Rural areas of the Mediterranean watersheds face enormous environmental challenges in response to water scarcity, enhanced erosion, and biodiversity decline. These issues have been aggravated by historical poor land management practices. In this context, MASBIO is framed with the objective of proposing sustainable land management actions at the watershed level, for the Mijares River. Sustainable land management practices are adaptation actions that promote sustainable rural development and generate synergies between the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere. MASBIO aims at proposing these actions as a result of scientific research, the use of existing traditional and administrative knowledge, and flexible and free access tools including the use of artificial intelligence and the active participation of key agents of Basin. 

Time Frame
2021 - 2022

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Con el apoyo del Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico, a través de la Fundación Biodiversidad

RESH2O

Restoration of environmental services and water cycle in the context of adaptation to climate change in mediterranean basins

There is a willingness to address the restoration of one of its basins (the Mijares River basin) by the Autonomous Government of the Valencian Community, the physical scope, atmospheric and eco-physiological processes and the role they could play are known, while having extensive experience in forest restoration (particularly post-fire).

These areas have undergone a cycle of feedback to drought and
desertification as a result of the elimination of forest vegetation cover and
the drying up of coastal marshes associated with the historical succession of
complex territorial management systems. In order to recover the
water cycle, it is necessary to approach the design of ecological restoration
processes in a participatory manner with all the actors involved in the design
of the actions. Advanced modelling techniques and the ARIES technology platform
for flexible model integration are used.

Time Frame
2021 - 2022

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

ORCHESTRA

Ice caves in the ordesa and Monte Perdido national park: impact of global change and reconstruction paleoenvironmental

This project is focused on the study of the ice caves in the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park with the main aim of analysing the impact of Global Change on these fragile environments. Besides, we want to extract paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental information from the preserved fossil ice, as was previously done in other projects at a Pyrenean scale where it was demonstrated the exceptional value of the climate data stored on the ice sequences hosted in high altitude caves. Since lakes and speleothems are usually scarce in the high altitude mountains, the study of ice deposits appears as an excellent opportunity to disentangle how the climate changed during the last centuries or even millennia.

On the other hand, the interest of this study can be found on the great impact those ice sequences are experiencing as a consequence of present day global warming. The increase in temperature, especially notorious in regions such as the Pyrenees, is causing an increase in the ice melting rates leading to lose the opportunity to investigate those unique archives. It is now a priority the characterization of these ice caves and the ice sequences and to assess them as one of the important features of our natural and geological heritage in the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park. In this proposal we approach the study of the ice caves in an integrative way, including (1) an ambitious monitoring survey that was already started in previous projects, (2) the textural characterization and sampling of the ice sequence and (3) the analyses of the chronology, isotopic variation and pollen content in the ice samples to obtain the record of climate changes in the past. Besides, this project wants to investigate the microbial communities that live in the ice (extremophile organisms) to know their rich diversity and adaptation mechanism. This proposal contributes to the challenge defined in this Project call as "Impact and monitoring of global change in the National Parks: effects on the geodiversity, biodiversity, their components and processes, both spatial and temporal" with the focus set on the impact of global change on the ice caves, as one of the main components of the cryosphere.

Time Frame
2020 - 2023

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 1. Climate Basis

PHLISCO

Reconciling water-use efficiency estimates across scales under future climate change scenarios using PHLoem carbon ISotopic COmposition

The exchange of water for carbon between the vegetation and the atmosphere constitutes the most important feedback mechanism underlying the regulation of water and carbon (C) cycles by the terrestrial biosphere. Water use efficiency (WUE) is the trait that serves to describe this intimate link between the C and water cycles and is a crucial parameter incorporated in many land-surface-models to predict vegetation-climatic feedbacks under future climate change scenario. WUE can be estimated using multiple approaches and methodologies concerning different temporal spatial and temporal scales. Empirical comparison of WUE estimates reveal that important disagreements exists among methodologies; however, these empirical comparisons cannot reveal the underlying mechanisms driving these discrepancies. Two of the most widely used methodologies to estimate WUE are measurements of the ratio of photosynthesis to stomatal conductance to water, using gas-exchange techniques, and analyses of the carbon isotopic composition (d13C) of plant material. This latter approach is based on the assumption that the d13C of plant material is mostly the result of isotopic discrimination occurring during diffusion through the stomatal pores and fractionation at the point of carboxylation.

The vast majority of these studies analyses d13C in either the leaves or the wood, but these reflect the signal of the plant physiological status all along the organ ontogeny. In addition, in tall trees, d13C varies greatly among leaves and thus individual measurements cannot capture whole-tree physiological status. Analyses of the phloem d13C constitute a promising avenue, as the phloem signal, when collected at the base of the trunk should reflect the wholetree physiological performance. Still, WUE estimates from d13C, even when they come from the phloem, are usually lower than WUE from measurements of gas-exchange. This is partly due the fact that estimates of WUE from d13C most often neglect the leaf internal resistance to CO2 diffusion, beyond the stomatal pores. Mesophyll conductance (gm) is the inverse of this resistance and it is a trait that varies greatly among plant functional types and in large individuals (adult trees) also among canopy layers. Furthermore, gm also varies greatly in response to climate change drivers including increasing vapour pressure deficit, water availability and atmospheric CO2 concentration. Previous studies, including ours, combining measurements of gm with WUE from different estimates suggest that neglecting gm limitations in the calculations of WUE from d13C could induce large biases and that these biases would be even larger under waterlimitations. Still, these studies showed that even after incorporating gm limitations, other post-photosynthetic fractionation processes exist that underlie disagreements between WUE estimates.

The aim of this proposal is to reconcile estimates of WUE describing vegetation functioning at different scales by incorporating internal leaf diffusional limitations, using Fagus sylvatica as a model species. This objective will materialise in the form of a novel protocol for estimating whole-tree WUE at large spatial scales from analyses of the phloem content. In this project, we will combine measurements under controlled conditions, intensive field measurements of physiological performance, sampling of physiological performance (including WUE from different methodolgies and gm) across a broad geographical range.

Time Frame
2020 - 2023

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

Acknowledgement

Proyecto financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades y la Agencia Estatal de Investigación con el nº exp: PID2019-107817RB-I00

GGKP

Green Growth Knowledge Platform-GGKP

Under the work of E4N and the GGKP working group, a clear need has been identified for international and non-governmental organizations to develop and agree to an integrated framework for providing green growth policy advice to national and sub-national entities, emphasizing the role of natural capital and ecosystem services.

Such a framework would seek to achieve three goals: first, to ensure that all relevant economic sectors and their values are fully represented within economic planning processes, particularly natural capital and ecosystem services; second, that these values are measured properly and integrated into green growth policy planning processes; third, that the best new forms of cutting edge data, particularly data from both geospatial and socioeconomic sources, are fully integrated and utilized for the most exacting analysis.

This SSFA enables BC3, on behalf of E4N and the GGKP and subject to peer review, to scope out, analyse and make recommendations for new GGKP partner- relevant applications of natural capital analysis in support of integrated green growth planning. Consequently, the SSFA will enable GGKP partner organizations, E4N and members of the GGKP working group to apply relevant insights directly to their national green growth work.

Time Frame
2020 - 2020

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

KONTRAE

Emergencia y diseminación de resistencias a los antibióticos: Vínculos entre salud humana, ganadería, alimentación y medio ambiente

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), antibiotic resistance is currently one of the greatest threats to human health, the economic sustainability of health systems, food security and socio-economic development in general.

In the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (ACBC), as in the rest of the world, this problem is increasing worryingly, as reflected in the growing detection in our hospitals of infections caused by multi-resistant or pan-resistant bacteria, with the consequent increase in deaths, healthcare costs (exempli gratia, more expensive treatments, longer hospital stays, chronic treatment resulting from medical sequelae) and productivity losses for companies (e.g., sick leave).

Until now, this problem has been addressed almost exclusively from the medical and, to a lesser extent, the veterinary environment. Actions have focused on: (1) monitoring the problem, i.e. detection and characterisation of multi- and pan-resistant bacteria, mainly in hospitals; and (2) rationalisation of antibiotic use. In this regard, unfortunately, there is much evidence to suggest that such rationalisation will not solve the problem, although it is certainly a necessary measure to prevent it from continuing to grow at such a worrying rate.

However, in order to successfully face this health and economic challenge [the World Bank warns that, if we do nothing, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections could cause a global economic crisis similar to that of 2008], it is essential to overcome reductionist approaches that confine interpretations to their own discipline (in this case, mostly the medical and/or veterinary field) and to approach it from a One Health perspective ("healthy people, healthy animals, safe and healthy food, healthy environment"), The emergence and spread of many antibiotic resistances occur in the environment and eventually reach people through different routes of exposure, and it is therefore essential to overcome reductionist approaches that confine interpretations to their own discipline (in this case, mostly the medical and/or veterinary field) and approach it from a One Health perspective ("healthy people, healthy animals, safe and healthy food, healthy environment").

Therefore, in the KONTRAE project (KONTRa Antibiotikoekiko Erresistentzia), the links between human health, livestock farming, food and the environment, in relation to antibiotic resistance, will be examined in depth. Given that the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry is less controlled than in human medicine, added to the fact that most antibiotics are administered in the veterinary field for different purposes, the work will focus on the exposure route represented in Figure 1:

It is important to emphasise that, while it is true that a significant percentage of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are acquired in hospitals (see State of the Art), it is also common to find antibiotic-resistant genes in horticultural products found in supermarkets and eaten fresh.

Time Frame
2020 - 2021

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.,RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Acknowledgement

Expediente: KK-2020/00007

Partners

ASOCIACION CLUSTER DE INDUSTRIAS DE MEDIO AMBIENTE DE EUSKADI
FUNDACION AZTI AZTI FUNDAZIOA
UPV/EHU - DEPARTAMENTO BIOQUÍMICA Y BIOLOGÍA MOLECULAR
UPV/EHU - DEPARTAMENTO ESTACION MARITIMA DE PLENCIA
UPV/EHU - DEPARTAMENTO QUÍMICA ANALÍTICA

VALUING

“The valuing the essentials" in 5 countries, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and south Africa

The objective of this SSFA is to develop tools for modelling and valuation of ecosystem services for natural capital accounts. These tools will be integrated within the ARtificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) platform. ARIES is a networked software technology that redefines ecosystem service assessment and valuation for decision-making.

The ARIES approach to mapping natural capital, natural processes, human beneficiaries, and service flows to society is a powerful new way to visualize, value, and manage the ecosystems on which the human economy and well-being depend. The SSFA would also develop experimental valuation models for selected ecosystem services. Finally, the developed set of tools will be applied in at least one of the 5 NCAVES project countries.

Time Frame
2020 - 2020

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 6 Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems

Acknowledgement

UNEP-UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME

ENERPOLIS

ENERgy Efficiency POLIcies in Spain: analysing consumer choices

In order to combat climate change, several policies have been used in Spain to reduce the carbon intensity of the economy. However, household behavioural change has not received enough priority by the international climate debate. For these, more research is needed to keep the 1.5ºC target within reach. ENERPOLIS seeks to understand the effectiveness of market based (energy efficiency labels) and command and control instruments (Low emission zones) in Spain. This will be done through analysing the willingness to pay for energy efficiency of household appliances and study the effectiveness of the Madrid Low emission zone. The project will allow to provide useful recommendations to improve the design of policies influencing consumers’ choices of energy efficient technologies. Specifically, it will allow us to provide insights on the effectiveness of regulatory and economic instruments in the transition towards an energy efficient economy.

The promotion of Energy Efficiency (EE) is an important step towards the decarbonisation of the energy sector. Several policy instruments target consumers’ choices and behaviour towards the purchase and use of energy efficient technologies. As some of these are rather new, research and feedback are needed to fine tune the instruments and ensure their effectiveness. This project will focus on two specific instruments in Spain, EE labelling for appliances and the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) regulation for transport in Madrid. The first one provides information to guide consumers to purchase more efficient appliances and is often used together with rebate schemes so can be considered as a market instrument. The second is a good example of command and control instrument as controls the number/type of vehicles entering a certain zone. The objective of this project is to evaluate the performance of these policies and explore possible design improvements. The research procedure proposed is: first, we will enhance the understanding on how EE information can be provided more efficiently adding information on monetary terms; second, the impact of LEZ on air quality and on city fleet com-position will be analysed; and third, we aim at contributing to the debate on the effectiveness of market based (EE labels) and command-and-control (LEZ) instruments. Three quantitative methodologies will be used: hedonic method, controlled lab experiment and causal inference.

Time Frame
2020 - 2022

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

Acknowledgement

“The project has received funding from “la Caixa” Banking Foundation under the project code 0435 - ENERPOLIS – ENERgy Efficiency POLIcies in Spain

GOBERNADAPT

Governance of climate change adaptation and risk management

The GOBERNADAPT project aims to develop an ambitious training programme for the local and regional population on climate risk management in order to understand the risks of coastal events (erosion and flooding) and, consequently, to co-decide on the Acceptable Risk Threshold (ARU) for the city of Dakar.

Time Frame
2019 - 2021

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.

Acknowledgement

AGENCIA VASCA DE COOPERACION PARA EL DESARROLLO

HAYEDOS

Assessing the role of soil diversity in maintaining the functionality of beech forests under a climate change scenario

Warming of the earth's surface, together with changes in precipitation patterns, increase the frequency and intensity of drought events due to climate change. In recent decades, the risk of loss of ecosystem functionality due to recurrent drought events has increased, even for regions where water availability was not expected to be limiting. This is the case for forests in temperate regions, such as the European beech forests (Fagus sylvatica), where clear signs of decline have been observed in recent years at the lower altitudinal and latitudinal limits of their distribution, i.e. in areas exposed to higher temperatures and higher water deficits.

However, the assessment of loss of ecosystem functionality should not be exclusively linked to the survival, growth and reproduction of the dominant species, as it depends to a large extent on its interactions with other species. In the case of beech forests, the establishment and maintenance of a network of symbiotic relationships between beech roots and mycorrhizal fungi plays a fundamental role in guaranteeing the supply of water and nutrients, especially during climatically unfavourable periods. In this project, we propose that the maintenance of this network of symbiotic relationships together with the plasticity of root growth are key to the maintenance of water and nutrient supply in beech forests, especially for those at the lower limit of their climatic distribution and during periods of low water availability. 

For this purpose, we propose an approach combining experiments and observational studies in the field and under controlled conditions to assess the vulnerability and risk of loss of functionality of beech forests in the Iberian Peninsula. We will select two beech forests: one in the centre and the other at the limit of their climatic distribution. We will assess the level of decline using radial growth measurements (dendrochronology) and compare the climatic sensitivity of growth in the two selected beech stands. Ecosystem functionality will be assessed by measuring plasticity for resource use (water and nitrogen uptake). For this purpose, we will use water and nitrogen isotopic analysis techniques in the field and under controlled conditions. Finally, we will characterise the phenology, taxonomic diversity and functional traits of roots and fungal hyphae over two growing seasons in both beech forests. Our results will contribute to assess the risk of loss of functionality of Iberian beech forests due to drought, in order to adapt forest and hydrological management plans to future climate change scenarios.

Time Frame
2019 - 2021

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 3 Ecosystems and Global Change

REVALUE

RElational VALues in Urban Environments: A transdisciplinary approach

REVALUE is a transdisciplinary project that aims to answer questions about the role of ‘relational values’ about nature in an urban context, including (1) What counts for people as relational value about urban biodiversity? (2) What indicators best measure relational values at both individual and social levels in an urban setting? And (3) How does it help to understand the relationships between urban biodiversity, human well-being and social equity, through a relational values lens? REVALUE also focuses on the role of recognizing and activating relational values in inclusive urban planning. To find answers to these questions, REVALUE will apply a case study in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz (European Green Capital 2012).

For this, it has the collaboration of the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ??(UAB) and the Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council through the Green Lab of the Center for Environmental Studies (CEA). REVALUE also aims to co-create knowledge between the research team of BC3, UAB and social actors of Vitoria-Gasteiz. The project is sponsored by the Basque Government and the Vitoria-Gasteiz City Council. Principal Investigator: Unai Pascual.

Time Frame
2019 - 2022

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

LIFE-IP URBAN KLIMA 2050

Systemic implementation of the CC action in the Basque Country for increased urban resilience as full territory enabler

All European regions are vulnerable to Climate Change (CC), although its consequences can manifest itself in several ways, depending on the region of the planet in which we find ourselves. According to the estimations, both the South and Southeast areas if Europe, where the Basque Country (north of Spain) is located, will be the critical areas affected by CC according to the number of adverse phenomena. In the Basque case it has been identified that main CC threats and impacts on the citizens, the territory and the economy
- Increase of mean sea level and wave frequency and intensity, impacts on urban settlements, harbours, and natural coastal environments.
- River floods with strong affections to the urban settlements.
- Heat waves and islands affecting health population.
- Landslides affecting infrastructures and neighbourhoods.
- Habitats displacement or disappearance and loss of its ecosystem services.

These will come as a result of the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events (i.e. sea storms, heat waves, floods….) resulting in:

• Increase of mean sea level and wave frequency and intensity, impacts on urban settlements, harbours, and natural coastal environments.
• River floods with strong affections to the urban settlements.
• Heat waves and islands affecting health population.
• Landslides affecting infrastructures and neighbourhoods.
• Habitats displacement or disappearance and loss of its ecosystem services.

LIFE-IP URBAN KLIMA 2050 will demonstrate the effective and well-coordinated implementation (directly in the IP and though complementary funding), of a climate strategy (KLIMA 2050) on a large territorial scale (Basque Country, 7 .200 Km 2, 2, 1 Mill inhabitants), while ensuring involvement of key stakeholders (Regional Government, Provincial Authorities, Municipalities, Public and Private companies, Research and Education sector, Social agents and citizens) and promoting the coordination with and mobilisation of other relevant funding sources: European Union (FEADER, FEDER, FSE, H2020 ... ), national level (MITECO, Fundaci6n Biodiversidad, Basque Government own funds ... ) and other private funds (BBVA, Iberdrola Foundation ... ).

URBAN KLIMA 2050 defines a particular approach to adapt, and sometimes mitigate the effects of CC in the Basque urban zones. It is considered that this approach could be considered as a replicable case study for similar regions of the EU. 

It presents the following framework:

The project considers the urban settlements as the core for CC adaptation. The Basque Country presents two urban settlement models: 1. The compact municipality where to respond and react to CC-derived risks and vulnerabilities and adaptation are the goals. These responses should be linked to advance towards sustainability in order to achieve a more resilient territory and a better quality of life for citizens; 2. The Small municipalities where there is still a strong connection between rural and urban areas. In the last, the challenge is focused on preserving these areas and its values by protecting their natural resources and rural population. Green infrastructures and Nature-based Solutions will play a key role on both challenges.

The interim revision of the 1st Action Plan (2015-2020) performed in 2017, identifies the mainstreaming of resilience and adaptation at territorial scales as key priority. This revision has highlighted: 1. The need for arrange synergies between the territories at several scales; 2. The need to take full advantage from innovative and sustainable solutions; 3. The need to act at urban and peri-urban areas; 4. The need to reinforce rural-urban links. In sum, this revision suggests the need to define a governance and action model adapted to each action level. Therefore, the project proposes key urban and peri-urban areas to develop Pilot Actions at the following 3 territorial scales:

Urban/peri-urban scale (C4): in order to promote the maximum synergies and interaction between adaptation and mitigation at municipal and supra-municipal level.

River basin scale (C5): taking into account that the settlement models in the territory are strongly conditioned by the characteristics of the catchments and that these articulate the potential main CC induced impacts and, at the same time, are the key­scale for the implementation of the best solutions to increase its resilience, since the inter-connection along the catchment is no doubt.

Coastal scale (CG): taking into account that a huge amount of population is living near the coast that presents a high degree of vulnerability in natural environments and even in several local urban areas and that there is a management concurrency with the National Administration.

Although Pilot Actions will be developed around all the Basque geography, some Priority Areas are defined on each governance level: urban areas (Bilbao, Vitoria!Gasteiz, Oonostia/San Sebastian, Bakio, Bermeo, Gemika-Lumo, Zarautz), peri-urban areas (Urdaibai-Green Infrastructures; Oebabarrena-Coastal Natural Habitat; Rioja Alavesa­Renewable Energies), river basins (Butroe, Oka, /baizabal, Deba, Urumea, Zadorra, Baia, Ebro) and coastal areas. More information provided in the maps under Form B2b.

 3. The project also identifies some topics that potentially would be affected by CC. It also includes specific actions to increase resilience in each of them

Territory {C2): in order to move towards a territorial model adapted and resilient, integrating CC both at regional scale ("Climate Proofing" criteria on Partial and Sectorial Territorial Planning) and at local scale (Urban Planning guides). Population (C3): relative to public health (cross effects between urban air quality, heat waves and heat islands ... ) and as well towards social commitment.

Infrastructures (C3): to reduce territorial vulnerability and CC induced risks (i.e . floods, landslides, sea storms or mean sea level rise) in the built environment and energy and water infrastructures.

Socio-economic activities (C1 ): horizontal to the 3 previous ones, in the sense that all actions foreseen in them will generate synergies and opportunities for innovation in the social and economic field.

This approach requires the generation of knowledge and the deployment of actions at the same time. Therefore, the opportunities of the urban environment have been considered to create dynamics towards carbon-free and resilient urban settlements and to increase the commitment between citizens and stakeholders regarding this topic {C7-C8}. LIFE-IP URBAN KLIMA 2050 will ensure new climatic governance models (C9) to achieve results and to integrate CC in other policy areas (such as Research, Rural development, Biodiversity- improvements in biodiversity and nature conservation, Education, Agricultural and primary policy ... ). Sustainability of the results will be ensured by the strategic capacities developed: skills, communication, funding. Active replication of the successes will be performed during the IP in other regions (through networks as VANGUARD, among others).

Proyect URL
http://urbanklima2050.eu/eu/

Time Frame
2019 - 2025

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 5 Adaptation Lab.,RG 5.1 One Health,RL 4 Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems

Partners

Sociedad Publica de Gestion Ambiental IHOBE S.A. (IHOBE)
Gobierno Vasco / Basque Government (GV)
Diputación Foral de Alava (DFA)
Diputación Foral de Bizkaia (DFB)
Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa / Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia (DFG)
Agencia Vasca de! Agua / Euskal Uraren Agentzia (URA)
Ente Vasco de la Energía (EVE)
Fundación de Cambia Climatico de Gipuzkoa (NATURKLIMA)
Fundación AZTI / AZTI Fundazioa (AZTI)
Asociación BC3 Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)
Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation (TECNALIA)
NEIKER - Instituto Vasco de Investigación y Desarrollo Agrario S.A. (NEIKER)
Universidad de Navarra -TECNUN (TECNUN)
Centro de Estudios Ambientales (CEA)
Ayuntamiento de Donostia/San Sebastian (AytoDSS)
Ayuntamiento de Bilbao (BILBAO)
Ayuntamiento de Bermeo (BERMEO)
Ayuntamiento de Zarautz (ZARAUTZ)
Ayuntamiento de Bakio (BAKIO)
Ayuntamiento de Gernika y Lumoko (GERNIKA)

Other information

https://www.bc3research.org/images/stories/PROJECTS_LOGOS/logo-urban-klima-life-3idiomas.jpg

JRS

Integrative modelling to understand pollination services across agricultural landscapes

Pollinator declines raise concern globally given the dependence of >70% of crops on pollinators. In South Africa (SA), pollination limitation is widespread, already documented for different crops. Improving flower visitation by wild pollinators could therefore substantially decrease yield gaps, while simultaneously delivering the conservation of important biodiversity. However, currently we lack basic knowledge on (i) the identity of the wild pollinator species that visit different crops, (ii) their efficiency, (iii) their responses to landscape characteristics and (iv) the spatial match or mismatch between source areas of pollinators and croplands. This stems from knowledge gaps in our taxonomic system, lack of empirical tests of pollination efficiencies and responses to land use, and the absence of models designed specifically for South Africa (SA) settings.

Here, we propose to create a partnership of international and SA researchers as well as stakeholders and other end] users, to 1) understand the nature of available data on crop pollination, 2) develop conceptual models tailored to the SA context 3) involve non]academic end]users in charge of making decisions rearding land use change and 4) understand the level of bioinformatics literacy and logistics currently present in SA. Our goal is to develop an improved Project Plan and Budget and Grant Proposal, which will serve to create customizable pollination service models for SA together with the local expertise to modify and improve them through time. In the long]term our objective is to gtransferh the edition of these models to local collaborators while maintaining collaboration with them to continue to produce dynamic ecosystem service models.

Time Frame
2019 - 2020

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 6 Integrated Modelling of Coupled Human-natural Systems

Acknowledgement

JRS Biodiversity Foundation

PARIS REINFORCE

Delivering on the Paris Agreement: A Demand-Driven Integrated Assessment Modelling Approach

PARIS REINFORCE aims to underpin climate policymaking with authoritative scientific processes and results, and enhance the science-policy interface, in light of the Paris Agreement and associated challenges. In particular, the aim is to develop a novel, demand-driven, IAM-oriented assessment framework for effectively supporting the design and assessment of climate policies in the EU as well as all other major emitters and selected less developed countries, in respect to the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

Building on an exhaustive facilitative dialogue and a strong ensemble of complementary?in terms of geographic, sectoral and focus domain coverage?IAMs, we will create an open-access, transparent data and knowledge exchange platform, I2AM PARIS, in order to support the effective implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions, the preparation of future action pledges, the development of 2050 decarbonisation strategies, and the reinforcement of the 2023 Global Stocktake. Moreover, we seek to enhance the legitimacy of the scientific processes in support of climate policymaking, by introducing an innovative stakeholder inclusion framework and improving the transparency of the respective models, methods and tools. Beyond effectively communicating respective outputs and fostering wider societal acceptance of climate policy, this framework actively involves policymakers and other stakeholder groups in all policy support processes: from the formulation of policy questions and the definition of modelling assumptions in a demand-driven approach; to the design of I2AM PARIS interfaces and specifications, and the mobilisation of tacit knowledge embedded in experts in the aim of bridging knowledge gaps and assessing uncertainties. Finally, we will introduce innovative integrative processes, in which IAMs are further coupled with well-established methodological frameworks, in order to improve the robustness of modelling outcomes against different types of uncertainties.

Time Frame
2019 - 2022

Status
Completed

Research Lines
RL 2 Low Carbon