Core of this project is the understanding that the valorisation of what is currently considered as a “waste” by farmers and relevant stakeholders, may contribute to a significant improvement of both the economic revenues of agricultural entrepreneurs and the environmental sustainability of their productions. Indeed, if adequately managed and entrained in a proper value chain, the agricultural waste, both organic and non-organic, may reveal a new resource, to be valorised in the framework of a circular economy approach. However, although the farmer is responsible for the end-of-life management, he is not able to do it alone. The farmer plays an important role in the recyclability, depending on the waste preparation at farm and his participation in the collection scheme. Hence, farmers, as well as other stakeholders involved in the relevant value chain, deserve a specific training, that is currently not existing all over Europe. Aim of this Project is the contribution to the development of regional eco-systems directly providing a valuable input to the economy by integrating work-based learning, thanks to a Quadruple-Helix approach involving Public Institutions (Regional/Local Ministries/Agencies), RTD performers/ VET providers, Private stakeholders (Farmers Associations, Collectors/Recycling Firms/Associations, etc.) and the Civil Society (NGO, No-profit Association, etc.). Core of the Project will be the modelling, implementation and validation of the Project “Rural Labs” in which, under the co-ordination of some among the most important Universities of the Mediterranean Europe, expert in agricultural waste management, the farmers and other relevant stakeholders will be trained. In these Rural Labs, new ways of training will be explored, starting from an on-site training, and implementing new ICT tools, to be produced for the sake of a larger audience of trained people, working in the Project Countries as well as in the rest of Europe.

CARDIMED will introduce a framework to build Climate Resilience in the Mediterranean biogeographical region, efficiently unifying individual efforts of regions and communities across different countries and continents. This will be achieved by deploying the digital infrastructure to harmonise the data collection and evaluation processes, providing open data to all the actors involved in the Nature-based Solutions (NBS) value chain and integrating crucial functions for Climate Resilience. Among these functions, smart digital tools for citizen participation and capacity building will supplement an ambitious multi-stakeholder engagement strategy, focused on knowledge translation and impact pathways. Furthermore, holistic modelling tools introducing the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus approach will provide comprehensive knowledge on the complex NBS interfaces, that will decisively contribute to addressing socio-ecological challenges, along with issues of valuation and low-investment rate in NBS. These actions will be implemented across 9 demonstration sites, composed of 10 regions, 20 locations and 28 communities and comprising 47 NBS that directly relate to 83 interventions and supporting units that tackle climate change and circularity challenges. The consolidation of the demonstrating regions and communities will establish the CARDIMED Resilience Alliance, that will function as the vehicle for expanding the network via upscaling the existing sites and adding new ones. The project includes 5 transferability cases, as well as an additional 10 that will be defined during the implementation. Through these actions, the CARDIMED Resilience Alliance will achieve at least 28 regions and 70 communities by 2030, will create 8000 jobs especially in the NBS sector, and will leverage over 450 M€ in climate investment.