DISTENDER will provide integrated strategies by building a methodological framework that guide the integration of climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation strategies through participatory approaches in ways that respond to the impacts and risks of climate change (CC), supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis that facilitates the understanding of interactions, synergies and tradeoffs. Holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation must be tailored to the context-specific situation and this requires a flexible and participatory planning process to ensure legitimate and salient action, carried out by all important stakeholders. DISTENDER will develop a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative socio-economic-climate scenarios through a facilitated participatory process that integrates bottom-up knowledge and locally-relevant drivers with top-down information from the global European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and downscaled Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC. A cross-sectorial and multi-scale impact assessment modelling toolkit will be developed to analyse the complex interactions over multiple sectors, including an economic evaluation framework. The economic impact of the different efforts will be analyse, including damage claim settlement and how do sectoral activity patterns change under various scenarios considering indirect and cascading effects. It is an innovative project combining three key concepts: cross-scale, integration/harmonization and robustness checking. DISTENDER will follow a pragmatic approach applying methodologies and toolkits across a range of European case studies (six core case studies and five followers) that reflect a cross-section of the challenges posed by CC adaptation and mitigation. The knowledge generated by DISTENDER will be offered by a Decision Support System (DSS) which will include guidelines, manuals, easy-to-use tools and experiences from the application of the cases studies.

Despite improved understanding of the need for science to inform biodiversity related policy making and the rich field of science-policy interfaces (SPIs) there remains a gap in ensuring that all decision makers across all societal sectors have direct access to research-based knowledge when planning, budgeting and deciding on actions that have an impact on local, national, EU and global biodiversity. BioAgora will develop a Science Service, which responds to the present gaps and future needs in SPIs and provides the science pillar of the EU’s Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD). It will channel the entire landscape of EU biodiversity science from monitoring to meta-analyses and communicate this knowledge through two-way platforms to EU institutions and the broader community. To do this, the project will use ongoing processes of SPIs across Europe and beyond, as demonstration cases, to address the most urgent needs identified for the Science Service. Bio-Agora will go beyond the state of the art by co-creating new ways of bridging the gap between science, practice and policy and use this as a basis for the Science Service’s development for future needs. It will 1) analyse the existing landscape of SPIs, assess their policy tools and the current biodiversity knowledge held in Europe, 2) engage with a broad range of actors –those already established ones and those not yet fully integrated within the landscape, as well as the users of SPIs; 3) form the Science Service governance structure and systems model along the projects span by testing it in real life; 4) provide capacity building for the EU community of decision makers to become empowered for transformative change for biodiversity. Bio-Agora will deliver a functional and responsive Science Service, capable of providing a one-stop-shop for fit-for-purpose materials and tools which enable decision makers to secure biodiversity and sustainability transformation

ETERNAL aims to contribute to sustainable development of pharmaceutical manufacture, use and disposal, by using and promoting full life cycle approaches covering design, manufacture, usage, and disposal, assessing the environmental risks of not only the API and residues/metabolites, but other chemicals and by-products of the production process. This type of approach is essential to take into consideration the types of green manufacturing approach under consideration by the pharmaceutical industry, as evidenced by the range and scope of case studies being undertaken within ETERNAL. Specific application of our risk and life cycle assessment approaches to the ETERNAL case studies is a key element of the proposed work and will provide industry and policymakers with key examples of how whole life cycle assessment may be used to evaluate the changes in environmental impacts expected due to the introduction of green manufacturing processes.

Worldwide freshwater resources are under increasing pressures of rapidly intensifying climate change effects putting the availability and quality of water resources and socio-economic developments at risk. River basin organisations need to be prepared. STARS4Water aims at improving the understanding of climate change impacts on water resources availability and the vulnerabilities for ecosystems, society and economic sectors at river basin scale. STARS4Water will develop and deliver new data services and data-driven models for better supporting the decision making on planning on actions for adaptative, resilient and sustainable management of fresh water resources. The project team will work with seven river basin organisations through a co-creation, living lab approach. The new services and models will be co-designed with stakeholders to meet their needs on data and information, ensuring relevance and uptake for use beyond the lifetime of the project. The STARS4Water project includes two distinctive elements: first, the need for an international stakeholder community to address the stakeholders’ needs and requirements and second, the development and application of innovative data and model concepts. New datasets and models offer possibilities for improved projections on water resources availability, and the new insights on links between water, nature, society ask for a broader set of indicators to be considered in decision-making on water management. These novel datasets, models and indicators are not yet fully matured and integrated in current river basin management information tools and decision-making processes. We acknowledge that these elements are of a different nature, being a stakeholder-driven approach and rather science-(data-)driven in the application of novel data and models, respectively. It is the consortium’s firm conviction that for substantial progress in climate change adaptation the two elements need to be combined.

Many current food production practices still result in air, water and soil pollution, contributing to biodiversity loss, climate change and poor air quality. Increasing global food demand drives ruminant livestock numbers, rapid land use change and nitrogen (N) fertilizer use, accelerating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The aim of this research is to provide a SI-traceable field measurement infrastructure for accurate determination of animal houses emissions as well as nitrogen footprints. Thanks to that, mitigation measures can be assessed to reduce emissions and improve inventories.