The overarching objective of Farmer’s Pride is to establish a network of stakeholders and conservation sites that effectively coordinates conservation actions to safeguard the wealth of Europe’s in situ plant genetic resources (PGR) and integrates the user community to maximize their sustainable use. Specifically, to address the challenge and scope of the SFS-04-2017 work programme, Farmer’s Pride will: a) build relationships between existing diverse PGR stakeholder networks, and where necessary create new partnerships to establish a unified network of stakeholders involved in PGR conservation and sustainable use; b) enhance existing knowledge of European landrace and crop wild relative genetic diversity and showcase how it can be effectively secured and managed; c) use social science and economic tools to establish the value of in situ PGR populations and individual traits, as well as a cost effective means of conserving them; d) use predictive characterization methods to identify valuable traits in in situ PGR populations, targeting those most vital for satisfying future agricultural and market needs; e) establish a mechanism to facilitate the flow of plant genetic material from in situ populations to the user community, both directly and via ex situ collections; f) develop and establish a durable governance and resourcing structure for the European network of in situ PGR conservation sites and stakeholders; g) promote public awareness of the value of PGR for agriculture and consumers; and h) design and implement a network of European sites and stakeholders that conserves the breadth of PGR diversity found in situ. Through these activities, Farmer’s Pride will result in significant strengthening of European capacities for the conservation, management and sustainable use of in situ PGR as a foundation for increased competitiveness in the farming and breeding sectors, and ultimately for long-term food and nutritional security in Europe.

PALUS DEMOS will establish 3 large scale paludiculture demonstration sites to provide insights in new agricultural business models, increased employment, and improved biodiversity and water quality in line with the objectives of the EU Green Deal. PALUS DEMOS will inspire entrepreneurs in agriculture, biobased manufacturing industry, communities, politicians, water and nature organisations and many others, that paludiculture will provide a new direction to preserve peat pastures, carbon stores and reduce GHG emissions. The proposed bottom-up approach (agriculture feeds science) is an opportunity that can improve social, economic and environmental sustainability, offering a future-proof model for agricultural entrepreneurs. Our demonstrators will act as lighthouses or beacons for local stakeholders and others from right across Europe & beyond. The focus of these demonstrators, supported by many of Europe’s leading experts, is to develop a range of best practices and land uses in strategic locations in three European countries ideally placed to spearhead the establishment of paludiculture practice and markets across Europe in a climate smart farming way. Beyond state of the art, we will establish co-created sustainable paludiculture practices at each of the three demonstrators. This will be fully supported by policy recommendations identifying enablers, barriers and policy gaps. We will work with stakeholders to develop (socio-)economic models using the quadruple helix innovation system, including government, industry, academia, and society. Our work will be supported by the development of long term business plans, it will include end users of the produced biomass and will be supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools co-created with stakeholders leading us towards an evidence based policy approach to paludiculture innovation.

Urgent and concerted action can stop and reverse unsustainable land use and the over-exploitation of land resources. This will however require rapid, simultaneous and coordinated action by a diversity of land use decision makers. MOSAIC aims therefore to achieve the following objectives: 1. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and drivers behind land use decisions (e.g. cultural factors, social identities, cognitive frameworks, market prices, legal frameworks, etc.), including their relative importance and interactions, within and between relevant governance levels, ranging from individual land managers to supra-national organisations. 2. To gain a thorough understanding of the awareness of key land use decision makers about climate change, biodiversity loss and renewable energy challenges, and their willingness to address these challenges. 3. To characterise future land use patterns based on spatial, social and economic models that integrate key insights into the motivations and drivers behind land use related decisions and the result of these decisions in causing displacement effects, i.e. indirect land use changes in other parts of the world. 4. To support policy design and implementation for climate change, renewable energy and biodiversity, by means of innovative cost-effective instruments and approaches co-created in policy labs contributing to and elaborating on MOSAIC’s research results in a transdisciplinary way. 5. To develop an interactive digital learning environment, embedded within a digital toolbox comprising proven technologies and approaches consistent with long-term European sustainability goals and strategies to support land use decision processes at governance levels ranging from local to supra-national scales. Interdisciplinary SSH research linked to state-of-the-art land use modelling will be core to this project, and will be embedded in a transdisciplinary research approach based on policy labs.

Biodiversity Meets Data - BMD - is a Single Access Point that provides managers of natural resources and policy makers with access to high-throughput biodiversity monitoring tools and AI driven taxon identification services, services to mobilise historical baseline and legacy data to FAIR data repositories, a data catalogue to all available biodiversity information, a suite of Virtual Research Environments (VREs) for data analyses for the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms, and a web-GIS data viewer to explore the data and VRE results. All data are harmonised across space-time-taxonomy and transformed into multi-dimensional data cubes that are analysed by the VREs. The VREs are co-designed with the stakeholder representatives to ensure that the VREs meet all requirements. The VREs include tools for a) biodiversity monitoring, b) identification and analysis of drivers of change, and c) projections of land cover and climate change on the distribution of species and habitats. The VRE results are presented as comprehensive products to the end users so that they can effectively be used to monitor biodiversity, address drivers of biodiversity loss, and plan, manage and expand protected areas, improve the conservation status of species and habitats, and comply to the reporting obligations under the EU nature directives based on up-to-date knowledge and solutions. BMD builds on a consortium of partners that are involved in the development of European research infrastructures and biodiversity monitoring projects, including eLTER (Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological Research), LifeWatch ERIC, MAMBO (Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity), BGE (Biodiversity Genomics Europe), B3 (Biodiversity Building Blocks for Policy, GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and ARISE (Authoritative and Rapid Identification System for Essential biodiversity information) among others.