PRIMA Section 1 – Nexus 2019 RIA

Deadline: Jul 16, 2019  
CALL EXPIRED

THEMATIC AREA:

Nexus

TOPIC:

Topic 1.4.1 Assessing social, technical and economic benefits of a cross-sectoral governance of the Water-Ecosystems-Food Nexus

TYPE OF ACTION:

RIA Research and Innovation action

TOTAL INDICATIVE AMOUNT ALLOCATED TO THIS CALL:

EUR 3.2 million

OPENING DATE:

17 December 2018

DEADLINE;

Stage 1 Pre-proposals - 28th February, 2019 (17:00h CET)
Stage 2 Full proposals - 16th July, 2019 (17:00h CET)

RIA – Topic 1.4.1: Assessing social, technical and economic benefits of a cross-sectoral governance of the Water-Ecosystems-Food Nexus

Challenge

Integrated management of resources through the Nexus approach can be a sustainable solution to the dichotomy between the increasing demand for food and water and the diminishing availability of supplies. The southern Mediterranean countries, in particular, face this challenge, which is worsened by the effects of climate change. The Nexus approach advocates the efficient, integrated use and management of land, water and other vital resources, as a way to minimise trade-offs and maximise synergies across sectors and generate shared economic, environmental and societal benefits. It is therefore equally important to identify already existing Nexus approaches and tools, as well as their proven benefits, and to develop novel ones, while codifying and upscaling knowledge in the Nexus field. The upscaling of knowledge and tools promoting the Nexus approach and the integrated management of resources should be accompanied by its acceptance by relevant stakeholders, in particular policymakers and the public sector at large, national and international donors and investors, and all those who can be contribute to creating/offering the necessary enabling environment.

Scope

In response to this call, relevant stakeholders from the Mediterranean region should conceive a demonstration project to assess existing Nexus tools and approaches and develop novel ones, for reaching social, environmental and economic benefits through integrated governance of the different water-using sectors, i.e. agriculture, food production and maintenance of ecosystem services. The involvement of the relevant stakeholders at all levels is necessary to ensure the sustainability of the solutions identified. Objectives of the call will be to create knowledge or fill knowledge gaps, collect and make available data to allow for the scaling-up of Nexus-related good practices. This knowledge should be codified and disseminated widely. Proposals should identify the obstacles to the creation of an enabling environment for new policies as well as governance, organisational and business models, which can enhance the Nexus approach and the scaling-up of good practices. Well-known obstacles are for example the lack of integration among WEF-related policies, strategies and management plans, which remain most of the times sectoral, and the absence of resources and/or financial instruments to enable private and public investment to implement Nexus solutions. Proposals should identify solutions to overcome these obstacles as well as targeted Nexus-based measures for each site and case. Such measures should be integrated in the planning and/or strategic documents of a sector that is most appropriate in each case and implemented in cooperation with the competent authorities.

Consortia implementing the action shall cooperate with the EC Knowledge Hub on Water and Agriculture  in order to facilitate the uptake of project outputs by policymakers after project completion.

Expected impact

Proposals should contribute to implement priorities set in the PRIMA SRIA and show the clear link of how expected impacts from the projects are going to implement the expected outputs indicated in PRIMA SRIA.

The project results must contribute to Operational Objective 3/ WATER GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS [1], 2/LAND AND WATER SUSTAINABILITY, 4/SMART AND SUSTAINABLE FARMING[2]

The project results are expected to contribute to:

• Breaking of disciplinary silos that prevent cross-sectoral planning and integrated management of water, food, soil and ecosystems.
• Improvement of systems approach to ensure smart water balances and allocation mechanisms, water safety that support the transition to a sustainable agriculture that is economically and socially beneficial and environmentally safe
• Uptake of multi-sectoral solutions by local and regional stakeholders by improving connection and coordination between research and policy-making
• Leveraging knowledge for innovation of technologies in the WEF sectors
• Increase of farmers’ food-water security and resilience through dissemination of best practices