Land and soils perform a number of vital functions including the production of food and the provision of ecosystem services such as water purification, nutrient cycling, carbon storage and the support to biodiversity. Pressures on land and soils continue growing as a consequence of competing demands for the delivery of food, energy and biomaterials or the development of industries, infrastructures and urbanisation. Finally, soils are also at the center of climate mitigation efforts.
A new level of ambition is needed to tackle Research and Innovation (R&I), thereby generating the necessary knowledge, solutions to enhance the delivery of soil functions and develop capacities for a more sustainable land management across Europe and beyond.
Scope:Activities will create an effective framework for action which will allow pooling resources, coordinating efforts and developing a coherent portfolio of R&I activities (programme) in the wider area of soils and land management. This will include
The details of coordination activities will be defined during the grant preparation phase with the Commission.
Proposals fall under the concept of the "multi-actor approach"[1], thus bring together main players such as from research, research funding, policy and land management and land. Transdisciplinary and integration of SSH and RRI are also encouraged. Activities will be implemented in close cooperation with EU Commission services. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU up to EUR 1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Expected Impact:Funded activities will increase European capacities (technical, organisational) for implementing a major R&I programme on soil/land management. This will result in
RRI
Socio-economic science and humanities
[1]See definition of the 'multi-actor approach' in the introduction to this Work Programme part.
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