Call: Supporting knowledge exchange between all AKIS actors in the Member States by means of an EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir

Transformative changes such as the ones required within the Green Deal are dynamic processes that require appropriate governance. At the same time, to ensure coordination and for collaborative decision-making, governance requires multiple channels and networks that provide readily available data and information coming from different sources.

R&I activities under this destination aim at both: experimenting with new ways to govern the transition process and modernising the governance, in particular by making information and knowledge available and accessible. R&I for governance to support the Green Deal shall provide insights into institutional barriers such as lock-ins, path dependency, political and cultural inertia power imbalances and regulatory inconsistencies or weaknesses.

Innovative governance supporting the Green Deal objectives needs to recognise, cope with and promote resilience in the face of on-going shocks and disruptions both globally and across Europe, whether these be climatic, ecological, economic, social, geo-political or related to health. Critical risk assessment and reduction strategies need to be incorporated, including the diversification of infrastructures, resources and knowledge through more self-sufficiency and autonomy.

Taking advantage of the use, uptake, deployment and exploitation of environmental observations[[The capacity to observe the environment, including space-based, in-situ-based (air, sea, land) observation, and citizen observations]] as well as digital solutions, assessed through the “do not harm” principle of the Green Deal, is key for innovative governance models and a more science-based policy design, implementation and monitoring. To maximise impacts of R&I on the ground and spark behavioural and socio-economic change, the knowledge and innovation produced throughout the whole cluster should be widely disseminated to key stakeholders of the relevant sectors of the cluster. In particular, the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) needs to be reinforced to accelerate the required transformative changes.

Data and information obtained through Environmental Observation is of great value when assessing the state of the planet and is delivering crucial information to support the Green Deal and the climate and ecological transition. Integration of this information from different sources (space-based, airborne including drones, in-situ and citizens observations) with other relevant data and knowledge while ensuring (better) accessible, interoperable or deployable information, delivers information necessary for shaping the direction of the development of policies in the broad context of Cluster 6 of Horizon Europe. A strong link to the European Earth observations programme Copernicus (in Cluster 4) and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth observation programme, as well as support to the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), its European regional initiative (EuroGEO) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is foreseen for topics on environmental observations under this destination. R&I activities relevant to ocean, seas and coastal waters will complement and support the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and UN Decade on Restoration, the G7 Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative, the pan-Commission Destination Earth initiative, the European Global Ocean Observing System (EOOS) and the GOOS 2030 strategy.

Digital innovation, in complementarity with Cluster 4 and Digital Europe Programmes activities, should bring benefits for citizens, businesses, researchers, the environment, society at large and policy-makers. The potential of the ongoing digital transformation, and its wider impacts, positive and negative, need to be better understood and monitored in view of future policy design and implementation, governance, and solution development

This destination will develop innovative digital and data based solutions to support communities and society at large, and economic sectors relevant for this cluster to achieve sustainability objectives. R&I activities will add value to the knowledge and cost-effectiveness of innovative technologies in and across primary production sectors, food systems, bioeconomy, ocean and biodiversity.

Knowledge and advice to all actors relevant to this cluster are key to improve sustainability. For instance, primary producers have a particular need for impartial and tailored advice on sustainable management choices. Knowledge and Innovation Systems are key drivers to enhance co-creation and thus speed up innovation and the take-up of results needed to achieve the Green Deal objectives and targets. This will include promoting interactive innovation and co-ownership of results by users, as well as strengthening synergies with other EU Funds in particular the CAP, reinforcing the multi-actor approach and setting up structural networking within national/regional/local AKISs. AKIS goes beyond agriculture, farming and rural activities and covers environment, climate, biodiversity, landscape, bio-based economy, consumers and citizens, i.e., all food and bio-based systems including transformation and distribution chains up until the consumer.

Expected impacts

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to innovative governance and sound decision making in policy for the green transition, and more specifically to one or several of the following impacts:

• Innovative governance models enabling sustainability and resilience notably to achieve better informed decision-making processes, societal engagement and innovation;
• Green Deal related domains benefit from further deployment and exploitation of Environmental Observation data and products ;
• A strengthened Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) [[The European Commission is a member and co-chair of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), as such the European Commission adopted the GEO Canberra Declaration (https://earthobservations.org/canberra_declaration.php and Commission Decision C(2019)7337/F1) and committed to contribute to the GEO objectives, including to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).]];
• Sustainability performance and competitiveness in the domains covered by Cluster 6 are enhanced through further deployment of digital and data technologies as key enablers;
• More informed and engaged stakeholders and end users including primary producers and consumers thanks to effective platforms such as Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS)
• Strengthened EU and international science-policy interfaces to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

When considering their impact, proposals also need to assess their compliance with the “Do No Significant Harm” principle [[as per Article 17 of Regulation (EU) No 2020/852 on the establishment of a framework to facilitate sustainable investment (EU Taxonomy Regulation)]] according to which the research and innovation activities of the project should not be supporting or carrying out activities that make a significant harm to any of the six environmental objectives of the EU Taxonomy Regulation.

Topics under this destination will have impacts in the following areas: “Climate change mitigation and adaptation”; “Clean and healthy air, water and soil”; “Enhancing ecosystems and biodiversity on land and in water”; “Sustainable food systems from farm to fork on land and sea”; “High quality digital services for all”; and “A Competitive and secure data-economy”.

Social innovation is recommended when the solution is at the socio-technical interface and requires social change, new social practices, social ownership or market uptake.

Expected Outcome:

In support of the Green Deal, common agricultural policy and farm to fork objectives and targets, the successful proposal will focus on appropriate management of data and information derived from different sources that are readily available. The expected outcome of this topic is to multiply the use of practice-oriented knowledge, build capacities and to demonstrate innovative solutions to accelerate the transition to a sustainable management and use of natural resources in farming and forestry. This will lead to more informed and engaged stakeholders and users of project results including primary producers and consumers thanks to effective platforms such as Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS).

Project results are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

1. Making information and knowledge readily available and easy accessible to farmers, foresters, advisors and other users of practice-ready knowledge. This will support the policy objectives linked to Cluster 6, such as the European Green Deal, the farm to fork strategy and the CAP, the biodiversity strategy and the wider bioeconomy research and policies by supporting the transition process across the EU in new and coherent ways;

2. The CAP cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing of knowledge, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas, and encouraging their uptake. This project will provide overall support related to concrete practice-oriented knowledge co-creation, the (digital) organisation of it and the sharing of approaches to do so among Member States;

3. The outcomes will be connecting actors, policies, projects and instruments to speed up innovation and the sharing of knowledge, in particular by:

(a) creating added value by better linking research, education, advisors and farming practice to trusted information sources and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge and innovation;

(b) connecting innovation actors and projects; resulting in faster and wider co-creation and transposition of innovative solutions into practice and communicating to the scientific community about the research needs of practice.

Scope:

Proposals should address the following activities:

• Collect and enable sharing – as a minimum – of the outcomes of all multi-actor projects from Horizon 2020 and those from Horizon Europe, and of all EIP-AGRI Operational Group innovative projects 2014-2020 and of those to come in the 2021-2027 period. This should be done by developing, operating and fine-tuning the use of an open access and open source digital EU-wide knowledge reservoir for practice interoperable with the European innovation partnership "Agricultural productivity and sustainability" (EIP-AGRI). The knowledge reservoir should be refined to make the tool as interactive and interoperable as possible with Member States’ growing number of websites and knowledge reservoirs for agriculture and forestry practice, and integrate as much as possible practice-oriented project outcomes from any other funding source. Where needed, this may entail policy dialogues and small studies;
• Develop this tool, which is to be owned and exploited by the EU, enabling it to serve the knowledge interactions within the EIP-AGRI network, in particular with a view to explore how to encourage emergence of new EIP-AGRI innovation projects by connecting projects and actors. To this end, the project should collaborate with the EIP-AGRI networks at Member State and at EU level;
• Share the output of the EU knowledge reservoir as widely as possible, using existing dissemination channels for farmers and foresters and national/regional/local AKIS channels, with the support of AKIS coordination bodies and platforms in Member States. Explore the possibilities for translation of its content into EU languages;
• Develop interactive communication activities on the outcomes of clusters of projects in the reservoir, so that the knowledge comes to life through workshops and encounters between AKIS’ actors, in particular those who have common interests across the EU. This will be the way to find out whether the knowledge reservoir meets end-users’ expectations. Through peer-to-peer activities and mixed actor events on dedicated parts of the content of the knowledge reservoir, enable innovations to arise from existing work, using the inputs and suggestions received from key actors all over the EU;
• Use the collected material to develop educational material for students, farmers, foresters, advisors and others, and for encouraging on-farm demonstrations. Give input for training of advisors and farmers (or other users). All this material is to be exploited across Europe through real life, one-to-one and virtual activities;
• The project should collaborate with all 27 EU Member States’ AKIS’ coordinating bodies and related networks, and strongly connect to the EIP-AGRI at EU level. Make use of the AKIS coordination in each Member State to connect actors all over Europe working on specific subjects. This collaboration should serve to verify whether the reservoir indeed meets the expectations of Member States’ AKIS’ actors;
• Make use of local connections in all 27 EU Member States to interpret the national/regional contexts, including in particular the innovation strand of national CAP Networks. Use the knowledge and innovation experts in the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group to discuss the project strategy and progress at the various stages of the project;
• Projects should have a minimum duration of 7 years, and build on the developments of the projects EURAKNOS and EUREKA, and - if relevant - of similar international initiatives. They must implement the multi-actor approach, including as a minimum the EIP-AGRI and national CAP networks and AKIS actors from many Member States as well as IT-experts with experience in knowledge reservoirs. Proposals should include tasks to collaborate with these Horizon 2020 projects to take over the agreed IT standards and languages according to the outcomes of the feasibility discussions in EURAKNOS and EUREKA.

eligible non-EU countries:

• countries associated to Horizon Europe

• low-and middle-income countries

Legal entities which are established in countries not listed above will be eligible for funding if provided for in the specific call conditions, or if their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority.

Specific cases:

• Affiliated entities - Affiliated entities are eligible for funding if they are established in one of the countries listed above.
• EU bodies - Legal entities created under EU law may also be eligible to receive funding, unless their basic act states otherwise.
• International organisations - International European research organisations are eligible to receive funding. Unless their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority, other international organisations are not eligible to receive funding. International organisations with headquarters in a Member State or Associated Country are eligible to receive funding for ‘Training and mobility’actions and when provided for in the specific call conditions.

Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call conditions , legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in actions provided that the consortium includes:

• at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State;and
• at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

Proposal page limits and layout:

The application form will have two parts:

• Part A to be filled in directly online  (administrative information, summarised budget, call-specific questions, etc.)
• Part B to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system

Page limit - Part B: 45 pages