The RENATURE proposal aims to establish and implement a strategy and research cluster to step-up and stimulate scientific excellence and innovation capacity in the area of nature-based solutions for sustainable development. Nature-based solutions, defined as living solutions that address societal challenges in a resource-efficient and adaptable manner and to provide simultaneously economic, social, and environmental benefits, are a priority for the key priority for the European Union research and innovation agenda. RENATURE will establish twinning between the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), as a tertiary and research organisation from a Widening country, and internationally leading research institutions from other member states. The proposed activities include various types of training and networking events aimed at building up the research capacity and at promoting research excellence in the field of nature-based solutions. The research team is composed of three leading research intensive institutions within this rapidly developing field and one private entity; that is the Trinity College Dublin (Ireland); University of Trento (Italy); University of East Anglia (United Kingdom), and Pensoft Publishers (Bulgaria). The project team possesses multidisciplinary skills and complementary knowledge, which is considered as being critical to offer new nature-based solutions for sustainable development. This collaboration is expected to offer the widening institution MCAST an opportunity to increase the research capacity within this sector, link up with existing initiatives and projects led by, or receiving input from, the research-intensive institutions, develop a national research cluster with strong international collaborations, and provide practical solutions based on cutting-edge science and developed through international collaboration.

CO-OP4CBD aims to enhance coordination of the EU support to advance the implementation of the CBD, and doing so make more effective use of existing expertise and initiatives. This will lead to greater coherence in the ways in which the EU, its Member States and associated countries identify and draw on available expertise, improved advice and support to a range of CBD processes, and a more coordinated and cooperative approach in the engagement of experts in supporting implementation of other intergovernmental agreements and processes. Therefore the core focus of CO-OP4CBD is to support the increase facilitation of technical and scientific cooperation in European countries and elsewhere. This will be achieved through the implementation of a set of Coordination and Support Actions: 1) building on existing networks of experts and institutions; 2) engaging experts into the CBD processes; 3) supporting the implementation of monitoring, reporting and review; and 4) increasing technical and scientific cooperation. These actions are targeted at and will benefit the EU, its Member States and associated countries. Many actions and outputs of CO-OP4CBD however will be of interest and use to other Parties to the CBD.

Eutrophication is a major problem causing poor ecological status of European lakes with its severe impacts being enhanced by climate change. However, at the same time, eutrophication could be the potential solution to the depletion of global phosphate (P) reserves, threatening global food security. A vast amount of P and other nutrients are lost from the catchment and transported into lakes, making most lakes a nutrient-rich reserve, as observed by the frequent occurrence of massive, devastating algal blooms in many lakes. FERRO bridges the nutrient enrichment problem to the depletion of P problem to create a sustainable solution to both challenges by circular management. We will develop a next-generation lake restoration approach by combining targeted restoration techniques with nutrient recovery and recycling to achieve multi-benefits: improved ecological status of lakes, support a circular economy, climate adaptation, support food production, promote biodiversity, and boost ecosystem services provision. The multiple environmental and socio-economic co-benefits extend beyond the scale of intervention, supporting wider sustainability and accounting for social and economic ambitions. FERRO supports the natural recovery of lakes (after many years of nutrient enrichment) through four transdisciplinary pillars: 1) classification and prioritization of lakes for restoration (integrated in-situ and remote sensing-based techniques); 2) implementation of sustainable catchment-oriented solutions (biotechnology to prevent nutrient losses in agriculture and nutrient recovery at lake inflows and reuse in agriculture), 3) implementation of sustainable in-lake restoration solutions (nutrient recovery from lakes and reuse in agriculture); and 4) knowledge transfer. FERRO marks a major shift in how lake restoration will be done for ages.

AGINFRA+ addresses the challenge of supporting user-driven design and prototyping of innovative e-infrastructure services and applications. It particularly tries to meet the needs of the scientific and technological communities that work on the multi-disciplinary and multi-domain problems related to agriculture and food. It will use, adapt and evolve existing open e-infrastructure resources and services (AGINFRA, OpenAIRE, EGI, EUDAT, D4Science), in order to demonstrate how fast prototyping and development of innovative data- and computing-intensive applications can take place. AGINFRA+ will evolve and develop further the resources and services of the AGINFRA research data e-infrastructure, which has been developed in the context of the FP7 agINFRA project and is now being operated and evolved by key stakeholders in agriculture and food (including Agroknow, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, INRA, Wageningen UR, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and others).

EU policies, such as the EU biodiversity strategy 2030 and the Birds and Habitats Directives, demand unbiased, integrated and regularly updated biodiversity and ecosystem service data. However, efforts to monitor wildlife and other species groups are spatially and temporally fragmented, taxonomically biased, and lack integration in Europe. To bridge this gap, the MAMBO project will develop, test and implement enabling tools for monitoring conservation status and ecological requirements of species and habitats for which knowledge gaps still exist. MAMBO brings together the technical expertise of computer science, remote sensing, social science expertise on human-technology interactions, environmental economy, and citizen science, with the biological expertise on species, ecology, and conservation biology. MAMBO is built around stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange (WP1) and the integration of new technology with existing research infrastructures (WP2). MAMBO will develop, test, and demonstrate new tools for monitoring species (WP3) and habitats (WP4) in a co-design process to create novel standards for species and habitat monitoring across the EU and beyond. MAMBO will work with stakeholders to identify user and policy needs for biodiversity monitoring and investigate the requirements for setting up a virtual lab to automate workflow deployment and efficient computing of the vast data streams (from on the ground sensors, and remote sensing) required to improve monitoring activities across Europe (WP4). Together with stakeholders, MAMBO will assess these new tools at demonstration sites distributed across Europe (WP5) to identify bottlenecks, analyze the cost-effectiveness of different tools, integrate data streams and upscale results (WP6). This will feed into the co-design of future, improved and more cost-effective monitoring schemes for species and habitats using novel technologies (WP7), and thus lead to a better management of protected sites and species.