Mobilisation of society to transform food systems for co-benefits
HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
Basic Information
- Identifier
- HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01-01
- Programme
- Innovative governance, environmental observations and digital solutions in support of the Green Deal
- Programme Period
- 2021 - 2027
- Status
- Closed (31094503)
- Opening Date
- October 28, 2021
- Deadline
- March 10, 2022
- Deadline Model
- single-stage
- Budget
- €23,000,000
- Keywords
- Social InnovationGlobal and transnational governance, internationalSocial sciences and humanitiesEnvironmentSocial innovationConducting, analysing studies and /or surveysSocial sciences, interdisciplinaryNutrition, DieteticsSocietal EngagementEU research policy /Research policies in the EUFOOD 2030food systemsco-benefitsmulti-actorFit4Food2030researchinnovation
Description
In line with the European Green Deal priorities and the farm to fork strategy for a fair healthy and environmentally friendly food system, as well as with the EU's Climate ambition for 2030 and 2050, the successful proposal will involve the mobilisation of society to transform food systems for co-benefits. This will lead to innovative governance models enabling sustainability and resilience, which achieve better-informed decision-making processes, societal engagement, and innovative solutions.
With the overarching aim to help transform food systems for co-benefits to nutrition and health, climate, environment, biodiversity, circularity and communities, the project will:
- Build on the Fit4Food2030[1] initiative to further the mobilisation of all relevant Food System public and private sector stakeholders, researchers, non-governmental organisations, educators, knowledge brokers, media and society, to work together via an interlinked structure at the level of cities, regions, and countries across Europe, and that supports mutual learning and good practices.
- A new and improved structured network of evidence-based policy labs throughout Europe so as to raise awareness, foster joint action, good practices and knowledge sharing amongst stakeholders relevant to food system policy developments and implementation at various levels: local, regional, national, EU and international level. Key to this will be the inclusion of decision and policy makers, scientists, and public authorities to ensure the sustainability and legitimacy of the governance process.
- Increased pan-European citizen engagement, social innovation and co-creation through local or regional living labs; promote food systems science education for children and youth while respecting national competence in the area of education and health, and measure the food systems transition progress in society.
Successful proposals are expected to:
- Establish a pan-European Food 2030 multi-actor and public engagement mechanism to raise food system awareness and foster more citizen (including youth) involvement and interest in science, research and innovation, necessary to foster support for a food system transformation that delivers co-benefits.
- Engage a network of science museums to co-create and deploy a Food 2030 “food systems lab” inspired by the Oceans Plastic Lab[2] to be deployed across Europe linking in particular to EU presidencies, important global meetings (e.g.: COP), and other relevant place-based initiatives (like I-Capital, Green Capital, etc.).
- Support emerging relevant citizen science projects at local level (neighbourhoods, towns and cities), conduct hackathons, hold science cafés, and set up a dedicated video channel to display food systems success stories, all with the aim of raising awareness of the need to transform food systems and to co-create citizen-inspired solutions.
- Develop and deploy innovative interactive food systems education material in support of both the informal and formal education of children and youth (including gender-specific messaging) across Europe while respecting national competence in the area of education and health, in cooperation with relevant European school networks, associations and local media outlets.
- Facilitate the cooperation of relevant EU Horizon Europe projects to arrive at a common language and explore/set common goals, discuss potential farm to fork strategy and Green Deal interventions, all with a view to strengthen co-ownership and cooperation, share and communicate knowledge, boost innovation and increase take-up of improved policy schemes among the food system actors, and society.
- Measurement of food systems transition progress by, for example, conducting surveys or employing sentiment analyses that demonstrates society’s level of interest and willingness to transform food systems for co-benefits and the perceive trade-offs.
- Explain and map how co-benefits will be achieved relevant to the four Food 2030 priorities[3]: nutrition for sustainable healthy diets, climate and environment, circularity and resource efficiency, innovation and empowerment of communities.
Involving a wide diversity of food system actors and conducting inter-disciplinary research is expected to implement the required multi actor approach (cf eligibility conditions).
The project should set out a clear plan on how it will collaborate with other projects selected under this and any other relevant topic/call, by participating in joint activities, workshops, as well as common communication and dissemination activities.
This topic should involve the effective contribution of SSH disciplines.
Cross-cutting Priorities:Social Innovation
Societal Engagement
Social sciences and humanities
[2]https://oceanplasticslab.net/
[3]https://ec.europa.eu/research/bioeconomy/index.cfm?pg=policy&lib=food2030
Destination & Scope
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 impact
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.
Eligibility & Conditions
General conditions
1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System
2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes
The following additional eligibility criteria apply:
The proposals must use the multi-actor approach. See definition of the multi-actor approach in the introduction to this work programme part.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes
5. Evaluation and award:
- Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes
- Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual
- Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes
Specific conditions
7. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]
Documents
Call documents:
Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System
Standard application form (HE CSA)
Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations
Standard evaluation form (HE CSA)
MGA
Additional documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 1. General Introduction
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 13. General Annexes
HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695
HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
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