Developing EU advisory networks on water use
HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
Basic Information
- Identifier
- HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01-15
- 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
- Digital AgendaAgriculture, Rural Development, FisheriesAKISadvisorwaterEIP
Description
In support of the Green Deal, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and farm to fork objectives and targets, the successful proposal will focus on advisor exchanges across the EU to increase the speed of knowledge creation and sharing, capacity building, of demonstration of innovative solutions, as well as helping to bring them into practice, which accelerates the needed transitions. Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) in which advisors are fully integrated are key drivers to speed up innovation and the uptake of research results by farmers.
Transformative changes such as the ones required within the Green Deal are dynamic processes that require appropriate governance of AKIS actors. Advisors are key actors strongly guiding and with a big influence over producers’ decisions. A novelty in the post- 2020 CAP plans[1] is that advisors now must be integrated within the Member States’ AKIS, and that the scope of their actions has become much broader. They must now be able to cover economic, environmental and social domains, as well as be informed on up-to-date science and technology. They should be able to translate this knowledge into opportunities, and use and adapt those to specific local circumstances. This specific topic focuses on the important role advisors can play related to climate change effects on water shortage, water pollution and avoiding salty soils, a quickly upcoming issue in the more sustainable agriculture of the future.
Project results are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- The most urgent policy objectives linked to Cluster 6, as well as the European Green Deal, and in particular the Farm to Fork Strategy and the CAP, with a view to increase farmer viability, help raise awareness and tackle societal challenges in helping the reduction of water pollution and use;
- 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[2] . This topic will help to fill gaps on emerging advisory topics beyond the classical sectorial advice, which is useful in particular in relation with the new obligation for Member States to integrate advisors within their AKIS which must cover a much broader scope than in the former period. It will provide overall support related to knowledge creation, organisation and sharing.
- Development of interaction with regional policy makers and of a potential EU network to discuss institutional barriers to practical water-related issues, such as bottlenecks, lock-ins, political inertia, ambiguous regulations, inequality between Member States and power imbalances;
- Production of supporting services and materials to facilitate the upscaling of prevention of water shortage and pollution, such as water audit schemes, novel water retention practices, water knowledge networks and peer-to-peer counselling, master classes, advice modules, communication and education materials, effective business models for farm management on dry soils, etc
- The outcomes should speed up introduction, spreading and bringing into practice of innovative solutions related to avoiding water shortage and pollution overall, in particular by:
- creating added value by better linking research, education, advisors and farming practice and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge across the EU;
- learning from innovation actors and projects, resulting in faster sharing and implementation of ready-to-use innovative solutions, spreading them into practice and communicating to the scientific community the bottom-up research needs of practice.
Proposals should address the following activities:
- Connect advisors having a broad and extensive network of farmers across all EU Member States in an EU advisory network dedicated to water use, including avoiding water shortage and pollution, with a view to sharing experiences on how to best tackle the issues, building on the outcomes of the EIP-AGRI “Focus Group on Water and Agriculture”[3], the EIP-AGRI Workshop: “Connecting innovative projects: Water & Agriculture”[4], and the H2020 “Thematic network to improve water management”[5]
- Share effective and novel approaches among the EU advisory network on water use, which are sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social aspects.
- Take strong account of cost-benefit elements. Collect and document good examples in this regard, connecting with farmers, intermediates and consumers in Member States to be able to take into account financial aspects and local conditions. Select the best practices, learn about the key success factors, possible quick wins and make them available for (local) exploitation, to ensure financial win-wins for producers, citizens and water companies.
- Integrate the advisors of the EU water use network into their Member State AKIS as much as possible. They should encourage as innovation brokers innovative projects on water use solutions in European innovation partnership "Agricultural productivity and sustainability" (EIP-AGRI) Operational Groups. They should give hands-on training to farmers and local advisors, lead national thematic and learning networks on the subject, deliver and implement action plans to make water use more efficient, reduce farmers’ water use and pollution, inspire new and incoming farmers or farms at the cross-roads of intergenerational renewal, connect with education and ensure broad communication, support peer-to-peer consulting, develop on-farm demonstrations and YouTube demo films, and provide specific back-office support for generalist advisors within the national / regional AKIS.
- Explore if the activities of the EU advisory network on water use can be up scaled at the level of a number of Member States under a cooperative format. Wherever possible, develop digital advisory tools for common use across the EU. Seek if common tools can be created to incentivise the implementation of the learnings from this project.
- Include all 27 EU Member States in the EU advisory network, using local AKIS connections which can more accurately interpret the national/regional contexts to help develop the best solutions for that Member State or region. Use the support of the Member States’ knowledge and innovation experts of the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group to discuss project strategy and progress in the various stages of the 2 projects. Projects should run at least 5 years. They must implement the multi-actor approach.
- Provide all outcomes and materials to the EIP-AGRI, including in the common 'practice abstract' format for EU wide dissemination, as well as to national / regional / local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24) in the requested formats.
Digital Agenda
[1]Art 13(2) of the post 2020 CAP regulation
[2]Art 5 CAP post 2020 proposal
[3]https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/en/publications/eip-agri-focus-group-water-and-agriculture-final
[4]https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/en/event/eip-agri-workshop-connecting-innovative-projects
[5]https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/en/news/thematic-network-improve-water-management-fertigated-crops
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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