Alpine Space cities face common urban mobility challenges which call for innovative and cost-effective mobility solutions. These challenges are: - limited public/ private budget for transport infrastructure; - excessive private car-based traffic in cities; - large amounts of fragmented goods delivery schemes contributing to congestion; - rising CO2 and noise, deteriorating air quality and adverse health impacts; - lack of/ inefficient institutional cooperation for long term solutions; - poor recognition of interdependencies between cities and neighbouring regions; - absence of an integrated planning approach to address mobility/ urban development/ land use planning. The Alpine Space is a region with continued growth, including increased passenger and freight transport. It suffers both from large volumes of cross-Alpine and seasonal traffic as well as sprawl from its cities to the countryside. It coordinates the development of the Sustainable regional-Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) concept which the EC strongly promotes and, in its 2011 Transport White Paper, even suggests as a mandatory approach. Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) has the following characteristics: - active involvement of all stakeholders throughout the planning process; -commitment to sustainability, i.e. balancing social equity, environmental quality and economic development; - looking beyond the borders through an integrated approach between policy sectors, cooperation between authority levels and coordination across neighbouring authorities; - focus on achieving ambitious, measurable targets; - targeting cost internalisation i.e. reviewing transport costs and benefits for society; - comprehensive method including all steps of the life cycle of policy making and implementation. The PUMAS Project aims to: - advance SUMP, which focuses on participation, integration, evaluation and cost internalisation as a new paradigm in mobility planning; - develop, implement and evaluate 7 pilots using SUMP methods and tools; - generate best practice and lessons for others in the AS and beyond; - improve the awareness, exchange, coordination and development of regional-urban mobility plans (freight and passenger) through an innovative communication platform; - create the Alpine Space community and the National and Alpine Reference Point for SUMP in Slovenia, thus guaranteeing sustainability beyond the lifetime of the project. The Alpine Space Programme is the EU transnational cooperation programme for the Alps. Partners from the seven Alpine countries work together to promote regional development in a sustainable way. The programme is jointly financed by the European Union, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Partner States taking part in the activities. The contribution of the project partners coming from the EU are co-funded by ERDF up to a rate of 76%. The remaining costs have to be covered by other public funds, depending on rules at national level.
The Catch-C project assesses the farm-compatibility of Best Management Practices (BMPs) that aim to promote productivity, climate change mitigation, and soil quality. These are the three overall goals of sustainable soil management. Catch-C will first (WP2) set up a typology of the main farm types and agro-ecological zones across Europe. This frame, coupled to a pan-European database of socio-economic and biophysical data, will be used for spatially organising the information collected on current management; and for up-scaling the impacts expected from changes in management. Biophysical impacts of management practices will be assessed (WP3) primarily from a large set of current field experiments, executed by the participants. BMPs will be formulated, along with their trade-offs and synergies between productivity, climate change mitigation, and soil quality. Farmers, however, often do not adopt BMPs. Identifying the barriers against adoption, and formulating ways to remove these, are core activities of the project (WP4). Catch-C will survey farmer views on BMPs in all participant countries, assess costs and benefits of implementation, identify technical and ecological bottlenecks preventing adoption, develop a decision support tool, and prioritize innovation requirements to address bottlenecks. Policy measures can promote adoption in various ways, such as voluntary measures, regulation, and economic incentives. In interaction with policy makers, Catch-C will develop (WP5) guidelines for policies that will support the adoption of BMPs; and that are consistent with regional agro-ecological and farming contexts. Dissemination (WP6) includes scientific publication; discussing project results with farmers and policy makers; making information about BMPs and their adoption available to a wider audience; and stimulating awareness about the pros and cons of BMPs for different farm types and environments in participant countries.
Background: As Albanian agriculture began returning to the private sector in the late 1990s, it was evident that the infrastructure was weak, resulting in low production standards and inefficient use of resources. Despite efforts in the last two decades to restructure and strengthen the agriculture sector, it still remains underdeveloped, characterised by inadequate research, development, transfer of knowledge and modernisation. Farmers still rely on outdated, inefficient pesticide application equipment and often use highly toxic pesticides that are banned in the rest of Europe. Within the agricultural schools and universities, there is a weak capacity for agricultural research and knowledge transfer stemming from several infrastructure-related shortcomings, such as lack of resources and contact with the global scientific community. This constrains the international competitiveness of researchers as well as the training of students in modern pest management approaches. The limited capacity for technology transfer hinders the generation of science-based solutions for local agricultural problems and an ineffective advisory service means that farmers remain disconnected from agricultural research and technology development. Aim: This project aims to build the capacity of relevant institutions in research and knowledge transfer in integrated pest management (IPM); a sustainable pest management approach that reduces overreliance on chemical pesticides and alleviates the negative impacts of agriculture on human health and the environment. The project also aims to strengthen the infrastructure required to improve the quality of agricultural production and enable self-reliance in developing and implementing sustainable IPM solutions. Significance: Through the integration of effective theoretical and practical IPM training into higher education, this project will better prepare students for future employment in an agricultural profession and increase the overall IPM knowledge base within the agricultural sector. The provision of relevant resources and training will enhance capacity for conducting IPM-related research as well as foster integration into the international scientific community. Finally, strengthening the link between research and farmers will provide an effective channel through which to disseminate practical IPM solutions to farmers. In taking an institutional partnership approach, this project will consolidate the linkages between all key IPM stakeholders and create the infrastructure required to promote awareness, communication and institutionalisation of IPM along the whole chain of agricultural research, education, policy and practice.
Objective: The EU has invested considerable resources over the last decade to support the development of water technologies. As it often is the case with innovative technologies, there are currently few resources to pursue this process in the needed scale, and the uptake potential of water technologies and other environmental technologies resulting from EU-funded research seems limited due to insufficient awareness of their developments and the opportunities they offer. Raising awareness among researchers, policy makers, businessmen and industries, as well as the large public, young people in particular is paramount to the full exploitation of these technologies which are able to boost economic growth and social welfare. The STREAM project intends to tackle this issue by bringing water technologies to the interest of potential uptakers through a diversified series of dissemination and communication actions tailored to the needs of the different categories of stakeholders. These include Policy Seminars to be held in 3 different countries and also streamed online, a Final Symposium at the European Parliament in Brussels, 2 Summer Schools, e-learning courses, audiovisual materials, including videos and interviews, webinars for research events and participation in sectorial events. A web platform will be set up from the very start of the project serving as a repository for all its activities and for the updated documentation material on latest research and policy progress in the field of water. A group of highly qualified actors need to be involved in such an ambitious proposal to perform all variety of activities foreseen: STREAM consortium gathers partners with specific capabilities and backgrounds and established relations in the field, like specialists in water issues, experts in communicating science and carrying out innovative dissemination activities to transfer the knowledge gathered to the target audiences.
Climate change, population growth, land use changes and urbanisation and so forth forcing future generations to produce more with fewer resources. Hence innovative water harvesting approaches in combination with an integrated water management are urgently needed. In the past water harvesting was manly seen isolated and set into a bigger framework of a river basin. Overexploitation at one side necessarily leads to a shortage at the downstream region. This is especially true for basin closure. It is inevitable that integrated water management has to care about upstream/downstream interactions and between water harvesting and large scale irrigation at the catchment/river basin scale. The objective of this proposal is to set standards for water utilization on a basin (sub basin scale) to ensure food and water security in an equitable manner throughout the whole basin in the context of a range of dynamic global and regional pressures. There are numerous technologies for water harvesting available, but what is missing is an appropriate system design and synergies amongst farmers and other stakeholders. The concept of the project therefore is to links knowledge of water harvesting of different regions and analyse and investigate acceptance of systems. A SWOT analyses should be performed for each selected study region to have a sound base for highest investment benefits and also a risk analyses of investment. This analysis also enables the development of guidelines and criteria to transfer the various water harvesting technologies in different hydrological, biological and socio-economic conditions and to ensure integration of those technologies in the context of local and regional economical environment. The Definition of water harvesting for this project is an Integration/Synergies of/with farming systems and as a wider definition with respect to WHO, measures of conservation farming. The advantage of conservation farming is an easy to implementation, it is practical; and reduces loss of water. The prominent part of water storage with regard to water balance has to be recognized. For each basin a water balance (precipitation, evapotranspiration, surface water run off, surface and ground water interaction, subsurface storage and run off) has to be established. One of the key factors could be the water storage in sub soil. The idea of water banking will be introduced. This supports the awareness that water has a value and optimisation may have cost involved. Cost is not necessarily seen in a monetary sense, but also in providing labour hours and commitment to maintain infrastructures. Taking the above into consideration and ensuring a participatory approach at all levels and between all stakeholders and partners will lead to a sustainable production system. By taking environmental requirements and impacts into account at an early stage environmental services are becoming an appropriate value.