Cities around the globe are struggling to meet the needs of their citizens with respect to food, energy and water. These three sectors are inextricably linked and actions in one sector more often have impacts in one or both of the others; these interacting sectors can therefore be seen as a Food-Energy-Water Nexus (FEW Nexus) of systems. The ERANET Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (EN-SUGI) will bring together the fragmented research and innovation expertise across Europe and beyond to find innovative new solutions to this FEW Nexus challenge. Furthermore, by linking the activity of the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe and the Belmont Forum (BF), EN-SUGI develops more resilient, applied urban solutions that bring research and innovation together from across the globe. EN-SUGI is a project that foresees the participation of 19 Funding Agencies eligible for the EU top up, 18 from JPI Urban Europe and 1 from Argentina, and 6 FAs non eligible for EU top up, under the umbrella of the Belmont forum , collaborating on a volunteer base. EN-SUGI Main objectives and impacts are: To support development of practical innovations and new collaborative research that will allow urban areas to understand and address the challenges of the Food-Energy-Water systems. (Impact = 12-14 projects funded, and 15 cities/local authorities engaged) To provide a framework for aligning R&I agendas of JPI Urban Europe and the BF,. The alignment will help foster transdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation in research and innovation, and facilitate the use of global expertise and knowledge (Impact = 24 funding organisations involved) EN-SUGI will foster development of international relationships between the different parts of the research and innovation community – to enable them to contribute to addressing those challenges and goals, while aligning them to wider, strategic initiatives, including the SRIA agenda, Future Earth and UN –Habitat.

The JPI for Urban Europe ERA-NET co-fund Smart Urban Futures (ENSUF) objectives are: - To tackle fragmentation and the implementation gap. - To contribute to integrated sustainable urban development. - To strengthen European urban research and innovation alignment. - To scale up and translate best practices. - To develop, analyse and test new strategies and technologies of urban governance and urban living in order to shape the economic, social and environmental needs of citizens for sustainable urban development. ENSUF will call for transnational research and innovation projects that operationalise and translate a framework of three main elements, and launch the Urban Europe response to the implementation gap in sustainable urban development. The three main elements are: - Transdiciplinary co-creation in research and innovation. - Smart integrated urban development. - Utilizing the spatial dimensions and processes of urban areas. These three elements will be integrated by transnational, forward-looking and comparative research and innovation projects focused on the following three priority call topics: - Concepts and strategies for smart urban transformation, growth and shrinkage - New dynamics of public services - Inclusive, vibrant and accessible urban communities The ENSUF Cofund proposal responds to the Horizon 2020 work programme for 2014 call ‘EURO-5-2015: ERA–NET on Smart Urban Futures, Overcoming the Crisis: New Ideas, Strategies and Governance Structures for Europe’. The EURO-5 call scope is to analyse strengths and weaknesses of current models of urban development, in order to improve knowledge and to identify and shape urban needs. In response, ENSUF will deliver (a) knowledge (strengths and weaknesses of urban development); (b) methodologies (new methods, tools and network approaches) and (c) a validation/assessment of the co-creation model and (d) outline new pathways for urban development.