The "A Soil Deal for Europe" Mission aims to accelerate the transition to healthy soils by 2030 through the establishment of 100 Soil Health Living Labs and Lighthouses (SHLL/LHs) that will drive the development and adoption of solutions. The Framework Partnership SOILL, led by ENoLL (the international association of certified Living Labs), has been created to coordinate, support, expand, and promote the network of 100 SHLL/LHs. During the initial two years of SOILL, the SOILL-Startup project will collaborate with the first waves of SHLL/LHs and key stakeholders to launch the SOILL one-stop structure. This involves: 1) Establishing a high-quality structure for SHLL/LHs with clear processes and procedures. A web-based Hub will be created to facilitate outreach, collaboration, support, and monitoring within and beyond the 100 SHLL/LHs network. 2) Providing comprehensive support to SHLL/LHs for a harmonized and sustainable approach within the network. This includes capacity building through training and supporting tools on methodologies, technical aspects, and cross-cutting areas. Regular monitoring and evaluation of SHLL/LHs will be conducted based on a consolidated assessment framework. 3) Supporting network expansion by promoting, engaging, matchmaking, and advising applicants to Mission calls. Events will be organized to showcase funding opportunities, provide examples, and disseminate information on the SHLL/LH concept and its implementation. Webinars, coaching, and matchmaking will assist applicants in conceptualization and consortia creation for their applications. 4) Facilitating knowledge exchange, collaboration, and synergy creation within the SHLL/LHs network and the wider community. SOILL-Startup will enhance the visibility and accessibility of the SHLL/LHs, their work, and achievements. Mutual-learning events, collaborative platforms, mutual visits, and matchmaking will facilitate collaboration opportunities, knowledge sharing, and solution uptake.

H4C Europe project will create a European Community of Practice (ECoP). It will provide a community, knowledge platform, and exchange structures that will help the existing and future hubs in creation, management, and growth, by overcoming barriers to IS/I-US/C. The ECoP is set up to be self-sustaining. 10 existing Hubs have committed to join as ECoP Founding Members. The ECoP will preserve the findings of IS/I-US/C research and innovation projects, especially those funded by the EC and member states. It will organize a continuous exchange of ideas and best practices and facilitate in-depth exchanges between experts to identify bottlenecks, evaluate the outcomes of related projects, and propose innovative approaches to overcome bottlenecks. Possible topics include the financing and operation of IS infrastructures, matching demand and supply in IS and I-US, sharing benefits, cross-border exchange of materials, water, and waste-water systems, regulatory issues in the use of secondary raw materials, the tension between re-use and use of waste as feedstock, to name a few. Digitalization is a transversal enabling aspect of IS/I-US/C and the usage of digital tools will be an important aspect of each expert group. In line with the call and to achieve its vision, the CSA will work along four axes: 1) Sustainable Community building and establishment of an IT knowledge platform as a tool, 2) Consolidation and creation of available knowledge by analysis of the state of the art, in-depth discussions of leading experts, and field trials of business models and financial strategies a.o. for large-scale demonstrators, 3) Development of a KPI toolkit for the assessment of the maturity of IS/I-US/C regional initiatives towards H4C and independent evaluation of H4Cs as candidates for lighthouse projects, as well as the elaboration of policy recommendations, 4) Promotion of the H4C concept, societal engagement, and policy recommendations.

The Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” aims to pioneer, showcase, and accelerate the transition to healthy soils by 2030, supporting the long-term commitments at European and global level within the Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals. Ultimately, the creation of 100 Living Labs (LLs) and Lighthouses (LHs) will accelerate the creation and uptake of solutions by land managers, showcase measurable increase in soil health, improved social capital and citizen awareness. SOILL – lead by ENoLL, the international association of certified LLs – aims to set up and run an effective, agile, transdisciplinary, capillary, open and fair one-stop-shop structure. This will coordinate, support, enlarge, and promote the network of 100 Soil Mission LLs and LLs, and ensure their co-created, user-centred, harmonized, reliable, impactful, replicable, and sustainable lead of the transition towards healthy soils across different settings, geographical and socio-economic contexts. To facilitate this, the SOILL action plan has been designed to be agile and ready to adapt to the specific needs and requirements of LLs and LHs (applicant and established) as well of the different actors relevant in the different ecosystems and value chains. SOILL will support the production, exchange, and integration of knowledge to be transformed into specific and specialised skills for expanding practice, social capital, and policies. SOILL will help established LLs and LHs - as well as regional and national stakeholders seen as potential applicants - in building peer-to-peer relationships to ensure that best practices, guidance, knowledge, and lessons learnt are meaningfully shared and that they can learn from each other and scale up implementation of innovative approaches. Alongside, SOILL will start, facilitate, and coordinate the interaction of the network in the wider framework of the soil-related ecosystems, engaging all relevant stakeholders at national, European, and international level.

Hubs for Circularity (H4C) are to be the European lighthouses of resource efficiency: through implementing best practice in industrial and urban symbiosis (I-US), the H4C are intended to achieve a step change in circular utilisation of resources and GHG emission reductions within given geographic areas. The European Community of Practice (ECoP) builds on and brings together ongoing work and expertise on H4C and I-US, initially supporting the H4C demonstrations funded under Horizon Europe. This project will develop both the ECoP network of stakeholders (commencing with funded H4C demo projects) together with an information and knowledge platform to enable stakeholders to take action. By creating awareness and fostering knowledge sharing between regions/cities and their industries, the H4C Platform will provide the tools and the evidence base for the approach to be adopted widely across Europe. A sustainable business model for deployment of the toolkit and services developed under the project will ensure the H4C ECoP is maintained well into the future. This consortium led by ISQ not only includes world leaders in the field (experienced in delivery, training, stakeholder engagement, models and methodologies) but also has the specific committed support and participation of many of the European bodies (those representing regions, cities, industry, educational institutions etc) that are needed to both disseminate the project outcomes and initiate implementation. Working closely with its sister consortium H4C-Europe, the H4C ECoP consortium is confident of delivering an ECoP and H4C platform that will achieve the target of greater circularity and carbon neutrality through profitable actions that also benefit communities/civil society.

"As defined by Ellen MacArthur Foundation, as the name suggests, a ‘circular economy’ is a feedback-rich approach, (often described as ‘circularity’) with its subject matter the choices we make around resources – the economy. It rests in contradistinction to a linear economy. A circular economy uses insights into real world systems which are complex, adaptive systems. These systems are open to modelling and influence where we emphasise participation, connections and understanding consequences rather than the identification of parts and their manipulation. A maturing circular economy will face three big challenges, as Walter Stahel (architect and industrial analysis) frames it. The challenge of ‘Re-‘ that is the challenge to perfect re-using, re-manufacturing, re-designing and all the other ‘re-‘ actions that need to occur to keep resources at their highest value for the longest possible time. Secondly follows the challenge of ‘De’, when products can no longer be re-cycled in a value-adding way: ‘de-constructing’, ‘disassembling’, ‘de-taching’. The third challenge comes with a capital K – Knowledge. Education about the circular economy framework and the crucial knowledge for it, such as technical and economic understanding, as well as ‘materials-literacy’, needs to permeate every level of society, not just c-suites and experts. As stressed and highlighted during the discussion taken at the “Circular Economy Stakeholder Conference” (9-10 March 2017) in Brussels, every worker, consumer and so, adult should be equipped with such knowledge, thus, education stands as one of the building blogs of a circular economy, including awareness-raising in general public and business community and integration of circular concepts at all levels of education, starting from the lifelong learning approach. Thus, CYCLE project stands for a shift to the circular economy by supporting the integration of circular economy into adult education curriculum and outreach programs to increase awareness in the general public and so, contributing to the construction of knowledge society based on human capital development.""Education in all its forms at all levels will form an essential part of the transition to a circular economy. This must include the identification of the training needs of workers who needs to be part of the immediate change as well as the longer-term action of educating future generations"" - as highlighted in the EESC ""Communication from the commission to the European Parliament"" on Circular Economy. Education needs to extend to all levels from primary schools to companies, SMEs, investors and financiers, etc. However, according to Jean Pierre Maugendre, there are some additional key trends to be considered when analyzing the effects of a circular economy on employment and the labour force. These trends are expected to profoundly shape the future of businesses, as well as the skills requirements for employees. Life-long learning is of major importance, however, the process of life-long learning has not yet been effectively integrated. By improving the skills of adult trainers, and thus, supporting the introduction of Circular Economy competences in lifelong learning, CYCLE project is intended not only to fill in the identified gap (improving the learning pathway of adult education professionals), but also contributing to the transition agenda. The project started in October 2017 and it finished in September 2019. CYCLE partnership is formed by six organisations coming from six different European countries: Spain, Austria, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United Kingdom, representing different approaches on learning methodologies, adult education and competences development. CYCLE project is intended to create a set of tools that improve and develop Non-Vocational Adult Trainers (NVATs) training competencies that ensure the introduction of circular economy competences in adult training, contributing to the creation of an attractive learning pathway for NVATs and facing the existing gap in this area. The main target group are “non-vocational adult trainers” defined as those trainers & facilitators that provide any form of adult learning – formal and not formal – that is not directly linked to the labour market. During project implementation, one main Intellectual Output has been elaborated: Intellectual output 2: CYCLE Competence Centre. To support the development of this platform we have built a competences framework - CYCLE Competences Framework as a reference not only for the project but for future initiatives on the area of training and circular economy."