Mountain covers 36% of Europe area and play an essential role in the provision of public and private goods. Despite their relevance in both ecological and socioeconomic terms, we lack updated and comparable knowledge of the impacts of climate change, demographic trends and socioeconomic drivers in these areas; as well as the necessary policy-mix to address them. Advanced knowledge on the vulnerability of land use and production systems and related value chains; and on the long-term trends and dynamics affecting European mountains is necessary to design the next generation of policies. MOVING objective is to build capacities and co-develop policy frameworks across Europe for the establishment of new or upgraded/upscaled value chains contributing to resilience and sustainability of mountain areas, valorising local assets and delivering private and public goods. MOVING includes: the screening of traditional and emerging value chains in all European mountain areas (including non-EU countries); in-deep assessment of Vulnerability and resilience of land use, production systems and value chains in 23 reference regions, accounting with the variability of the different mountains types; Participatory theory building to provide knowledge and assessment indicators; Participatory foresight exercises to inform about the future trends at regional and EU levels; Benchmarking analysis to identify enabling and blocking factors to value chains resilience. A policy roadmap will provide guidelines to support the design of public and private policy instruments that boost mountain areas resilience and provision of public and private goods. MOVING strongly relies on a Citizen-science-policy interface organised around a multi-actor approach: a Community of Practice formed by 23 multi-actor platforms and an EU platform; a Virtual Research Environment to foster online interactions among actors; and new visual tools to make the information accessible to different audiences.

Building on a methodology for innovation-driven research previously developed and tested, the WINETWORK project has the ambition to stimulate collaborative innovation in the wine sector. The project will implement a methodology that has been successful in promoting demand-driven innovations in previous regional and European projects. This approach is mainly based on the interactions between a network of facilitator agents, several regional technical working groups and one European scientific working group. A participatory approach is used to translate results from science and practical knowledge into technical datasheets that are used to prepare materials adapted to end-users. A bottom-up approach is also used to identify a demand-driven innovation agenda. In the WINETWORK project, the approach will be implemented in ten regions from seven countries representing more than 90% of the EU wine production. The main topic addressed in the network concern the control and the fight against diseases that jeopardise the future production potential of the EU (Grapevine Trunk Diseases and Flavescence Dorée). As they represent a threat for the economic viability of the entire sector, these topics have been previously identified as a priority by winegrowers, scientists and decision-makers. As many winegrowers are testing innovative and sustainable approaches to fight these diseases, it is very beneficial to capture these ideas and to share them between EU countries. Innovative practices will be synthesized, tailored and translated to become fully accessible to innovation support services and to winegrowers. The project will then deliver a vast reservoir of existing scientific and practical knowledge related to sustainable vineyard management. It will also provide a methodology that will support all agriculture sectors to enhance innovation-driven research. WINETWORK involves 11 partners of excellence representing the entire innovation chain, from science to farmers.

AgriLink aims to stimulate sustainability transitions in European agriculture through better understanding the roles played by farm advice in farmer decision-making. To this end, AgriLink will analyse and improve the role of farmer advice in 8 innovation areas that combine challenges identified in the “Strategic Approach to EU Agricultural Research & Innovation”. AgriLink builds on the premise that the full range of advice-providing organisations need to be included in the assessment of service provision and innovation adoption. The methodology combines theoretical insights with cutting edge research methods within a multi-actor, transdisciplinary approach. It draws on ‘micro-AKIS’ (individuals and organisations from whom farmers seek services and exchange knowledge with) analysis in 26 focus regions, sociotechnical scenario development and ‘living laboratories’ where farmers, advisors and researchers work together. Research in focus regions will provide insight in farmers’ micro-AKIS, advisory suppliers’ business models, and regional farm advisory systems. This will feed an assessment of the efficacy of governance of farm-advice-research interactions across Europe. Newly developed advisory methods and new forms of research-practice interaction will be validated and further developed in Living Laboratories. A socio-technical scenario method will be used to explore, jointly with stakeholders, transition pathways towards more sustainable agriculture. Crucially, AgriLink builds on insights and experiences from both research and practice. The consortium consists of researchers from different disciplines (institutional economics, innovation studies, AKIS studies, sociology of networks), as well as of advisors (from public, private and farmer-based organisations) from across the EU. Actors from advisory services will be active in the validation and dissemination of results, to ensure that all project findings are both scientifically sound and practically useful.