Despite its importance, biodiversity is at a high risk of a 6th mass extinction. Widespread trade networks spanning our globe allow consumption in one part of the world to cause biodiversity impacts elsewhere. Unfortunately, we have limited and incomplete tools for assessing the impacts of trade on biodiversity, which hampers mitigating these losses for policymakers, retailers and other stakeholders. In BAMBOO, we want to rectify this situation with a focus on non-food biomass. We will develop models to quantify biodiversity impacts using four indicators: species richness, mean species abundance, functional diversity and ecosystem services. We will use LC-IMPACT and GLOBIO for impact categories that already exist but update them to the newest state. More importantly, we will complement them with novel impact categories to cover impacts across the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms. We will create a new, hybrid multiregional input-output (MRIO) model based on the well-known EXIOBASE and the biomass-specific FABIO models. This MRIO model will be linked to our impact assessment methods and the integrated assessment model IMAGE for scenario generation to assess global trade and identify potential leverage points for halting and reversing biodiversity loss now and under future scenarios. Apart from global assessments and recommendations, we will test our models on two local case studies: fishmeal production in Peru and cotton production in Tanzania. To maximize our outreach, we plan to develop an online tool that will allow stakeholders to use all models easily. In general, our models will be freely available on Zenodo. Overall, BAMBOO will provide comprehensive and detailed knowledge of the effects of biomass trade from land and sea on biodiversity and ecosystem services and an improved way of identifying leverage points. This will ultimately contribute to better environmental decision-making, supporting to reach science-based targets and the SDGs.

The main objective of I-MAT is to empower the capacity of Latin American HEIs (Colombia, Peru and Brazil) to attract students and academic and non-academic staff to mobility initiatives, through digital and innovative approaches.The specific objectives are: to bring together key actors in European Countries, responsible for international mobility and cooperation, to better understand the challenges that these three countries are facing to attract students and academic and non-academic staff to mobility initiatives and its exacerbation by the COVID-19 pandemic; Filter the best practices/strategies used in European HEIs to attract the targeted group to mobility initiatives, through digital and innovative approaches; Support Latin American (LA) partner countries in addressing the challenges that their HEIs are facing to attract the focus group to mobility initiatives; Address concrete recommendations and good practices to those involved in mobility initiatives; Create and implement a training framework to strengthen the LA HEIs capacity to attract the targeted group to mobility initiatives, through digital and innovative approaches.The planned activities are distributed among specific work packages dedicated to different phases (Preparation, Development, Implementation and Impact and Dissemination):The preparation phase will include a status report, based on surveys to LA HEIs and Fact-Finding Study Table for EU Partner HEIs on International Mobility. Based on these results, the development phase will focus on innovative tools to attract the targeted group for international mobility (Catalogue of Innovative Tools of the best European practices and its adaptation to the targeted LA HEIs; International Mobility Interactive App “I-MOB”) and Training programmes in the LA partner HEIs for academics and administrators working with international mobility strategies. The Implementation phase will include activities in the LA HEIs to attract the targeted group to International Cooperation and Mobility.

The EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project directly meets the challenge of fostering EU-CELAC relations by studying the close connections between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in the field of community museology. To address this challenge, EU-LAC-MUSEUMS assembles a team of leading academics, museum professionals and policy makers elected by the European and LAC Regional Alliances of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) (www.icom.museum). Together, we are committed to exploring the cultural, scientific and social dimensions of EU-LAC relations with a view to “supporting the process of EU-CELAC cooperation outlined by the EU-CELAC Action Plan 2013-2015 in defining a common vision for the years to come”. Through a series of thematic work packages we will pursue the theme of “Museums and Community: Concepts, Experiences, and Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean”. A good deal of research has been carried out into this subject at local, national, and regional levels in both EU and LAC, but a concerted bi-regional investigation is yet to appear. EU-LAC-MUSEUMS will overcome this gap in knowledge by creating parity of esteem and sustainable dialogue and co-operation between academia, museums and communities in each region. It will achieve this goal by pursuing work packages dealing with the cross cutting societal challenges of: a) "Technology and Innovation for Bi-Regional Integration"; b) "Museum Education for Social Inclusion and Cohesion"; c) "Investment and Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Museums”, and d) “Exhibiting Migration and Gender”. In so doing, we will push forward the agenda of the EU-CELAC Action Plan in museum practice and theory.

This project intends to give a significant contribution in high education, proposing a specific master programme to form innovative managers, researchers and local developers, but at the same time providing a strict connection with industry and society, in a framework of blended learning approach. Precisely, the main aim is to allow SMEs and other kind of companies or institutions identifying good practices and new behaviours to face innovation challenges. The master degree students shall be capable to deal with innovation in traditional sector products, but also with the most advanced technologies, such as nanotechnology, biotech and ICT most innovative tools, with particular attention to the environmental problems in order to achieve sustainable solutions. Concerning sustainability, competences related to the circular economy will be trained, particularly promoting resource productivity with the aim of reducing wastes and avoid pollution. Industrial products and systems should be designed in order to close the loop, recycling and reusing post-consumer waste to make new products. This innovative approach must be fostered, especially among manufacturing enterprises, and the expected results of the master degree will be well prepared managers and researchers, fundamental in implementing sustainable innovation.Therefore, the programme will create competences for transforming knowledge into added value for society, providing entrepreneurship training to innovative participants, supporting with innovative financing (crowd-sourcing) such new opportunities, and interacting for solving environmental problems with new tools and rationale of the circular economy. In term of future impacts, this project will create capacities in managing technology and innovation in social and productive applications while constructing bridges for overcoming the “Valley of Death”, or the “European Paradox”, in a world of uncertainty, sustainability and complexity.

Food and biomass production systems are among the most prominent drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide. Halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity therefore requires transformative change of food and biomass systems, addressing the nexus of agricultural production, processing and transport, retailing, consumer preferences and diets, as well as investment, climate action and ecosystem conservation and restoration. The RAINFOREST project will contribute to enabling, upscaling and accelerating transformative change to reduce biodiversity impacts of major food and biomass value chains. Together with stakeholders, we will co-develop and evaluate just and viable transformative change pathways and interventions. We will identify stakeholder preferences for a range of policy and technology-based solutions, as well as governance enablers, for more sustainable food and biomass value chains. We will then evaluate these pathways and solutions using a novel combination of integrated assessment modeling, input-output modeling and life cycle assessment, based on case studies in various stages of the nexus, at different spatial scales and organizational levels. This co-production approach enables the identification and evaluation of just and viable transformative change leverage points, levers and their impacts for conserving biodiversity (SDGs 12, 14-15) that minimize trade-offs with targets related to climate (SDG13) and socio-economic developments (SDGs 1-3). We will elucidate leverage points, impacts, and obstacles for transformative change and provide concrete and actionable recommendations for transformative change for consumers, producers, investors, and policymakers.