Climate change phenomena represent the most serious threats to human well-being and sustainable development. This affects several dimensions of human life from individual health issues to economic growth, passing through civil protection, with strong impacts on European territories and in several other world regions. The I-CHANGE (Individual Change of HAbits Needed for Green European transition) project faces the challenge of engaging and promoting the active participation of citizens for addressing climate change, sustainable development and environmental protection in the framework of the European Green Deal , the European Climate Pact and the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The overall driving concept is that citizens and civil society have a central role in the definition of environmental protection and climate action and their direct involvement is essential to drive a true shift and promotion of changes of behaviors towards more sustainable patterns. I-CHANGE represents a change of paradigm achievable through a multi-disciplinary and participatory approach: improvement of data usability - citizen awareness raises through the observation of the environmental impacts of human activities; active participation of citizens - the active involvement of citizens through a set of Living Labs (LLs) located in different socio-economic contexts; climate change awareness - the development of clear understanding for citizens of the scientific processes underlying climate change and environmental protections.

TRANS-SAHARA will establish a groundbreaking approach for leveraging agroforestry systems to support African communities in their fight against climate change. This innovative approach is based on the well-established Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus approach, which emphasizes the primacy of ensuring water security when designing, installing and managing agroforestry systems. The translation of this conceptual agroforestry management approach into real-world applications is supported by an array of technical and non-technical innovations. These include cutting-edge measurement methods and tools to accurately assess environmental and socio-economic impacts, scalable nature-based intervention strategies to facilitate sustainable exploitation of natural resources, and novel business models designed to secure long-term livelihoods of local communities engaged in agroforestry practices. The efficacy of the novel approach and supporting innovations will be rigorously tested and validated through a series of large-scale pilot demonstrations set to take place in key locations across Africa, including Tunisia, Ghana, and Ethiopia. Novel community-led engagement methods are used to support the co-design of the demonstrators, and ensure deep acceptance of the innovation within local communities. Expected outcomes will contribute to bridging the agroforestry data gaps in Africa, increased crop yield, doubling of farmers’ annual incomes, and creation of new carbon sinks across previously degraded territories. An ambitious post-project exploitation plan executed in partnership with EU and African policymakers and civil society groups foresees the immediate and widespread uptake of resulting innovations across African Union (AU) member countries and beyond by 2030. Innovation adopters will significantly enhance their communities’ resilience to threats posed by the climate emergency, and stimulate highly sustainable socio-economic development across their region.

African societies face growing global change risks, with rapidly changing patterns of human settlements and intensity of use of ecosystem services. At the same time, climate variability and climate change trends are intensifying stress on the ecosystems that ensure environmental security, both locally (e.g. ecosystem services), regionally (e.g. sustainable development options) and internationally (e.g. carbon sequestration). Approaches that can address this challenge in an integrated and multidisciplinary way are urgently needed in many places in Africa where there is a close relationship between societal well-being and environmental condition, relating particularly to biomass for energy and food production, and hydrological considerations such as water yields. Policymakers and land-use decision makers are increasingly dependent on knowledge on the state of the environment. Long-term observational systems and research infrastructures have been identified to be indispensable elements of knowledge generation to serve climate change adaptation, food security, and climate change mitigation. This proposal supports EU-African cooperation on research infrastructures. Its aims are to increase coherence and interoperability between infrastructures in Europe and Africa, to enhance technical competence, science awareness and life-long learning in Africa in order to facilitate the use of research results for evidence-based policy making, and to identify knowledge gaps for future research directions. The project will 1) identify the essential parameters needed to develop science based strategies to improve food and nutrition security including early warning systems and to mitigate climate change, 2) formulate a roadmap towards fully interoperable and accessible research infrastructures in agricultural and climate research in the EU and Africa that match the needs of the users, and 3) deliver a contribution to capacity building and human capital development in Africa.

The main objective of AfriAlliance is for African and European stakeholders to work together in the areas of water innovation, research, policy, and capacity development to prepare Africa for future Climate Change challenges. There are many but fragmented initiatives and networks in place, therefore we will not create new but will consolidate existing networks of scientists, decision makers, practitioners, citizens and other key stakeholders into an effective, problem-focused knowledge sharing mechanism via an overall coordination platform: the Africa-EU Innovation Alliance for Water and Climate. We will support them in identifying appropriate social innovation and technological solutions for key water and climate change challenges. We will take Africa-EU cooperation in this field to a practical level by sharing (non)technological innovation for local challenges, thus also identifying and boosting sustainable market and investment opportunities. Demand-driven, problem-focused Action Groups will share knowledge between the identified stakeholders and networks at all scales to effectively identify and address vulnerabilities. We will make extensive use of existing/emerging communication channels and events (EU/African platforms, conferences, social media) to streamline Climate Change issues into water-related networks to raise awareness about their impacts and propose adaptation measures. We will re-enforce and valorise Water and Climate Change research and (social) innovation (R&I) cooperation between Africa and Europe through a mix of forward-looking and bottom-up innovation and road mapping techniques. We will identify demands, opportunities, and constraints at different levels and develop strategic advice (short term demand-driven R&I outlook and long term R&I agenda) for improving Africa-EU collaboration. This will help policy makers to create a consistent approach to bilateral cooperation between Africa and the EU in the field of innovation for water and climate