MATS aims to identify key leverage points for changes in agricultural trade policy that foster the positive and reduce the negative impacts of trade on environmental sustainability and human well-being. Focus is on improving the design, governance and implementation of trade regimes and policies at private sector, national, EU, African and global levels. The key operational features of MATS are: a) a set of 15 in-depth country, regional and product case studies to provide a deeper understanding of the conditions for sustainable trade, an integrated multi-model simulation and assessment of linkages with agricultural market, trade and investment dynamics, and an analy-sis of institutional, regulatory and legal frameworks; b) a multi-stakeholder backcasting approach that builds on recent research related to transformative change and social innovation, and that uses novel participatory methods and platforms to explore transition pathways towards sustainable trade; c) a clustering with other trade-related research projects to benefit from synergies, and a major role for sector representatives, social movements and policymakers in framing analyses, co-assessing linkages, and deriving policy recommendations. MATS has the ambition to set a new benchmark in trade policy analysis. The main project outputs will be: (1) New quantitative and qualitative insights on the interactions between agricultural markets, trade, investments, policy, environmental sustainability and human well-being. (2) A set of Discussion Papers and Policy Briefs, incl. recommendations for enhancing the coherence of agricultural and trade policies with the SDGs. (3) An enhanced civil society–stakeholder–policy dialogue that is supported by an evidence-based communication platform – the Sustainable Trade Hub. (4) A set of innovative research tools for the analysis of the interactions between agricultural trade, agricultural investments, policy, environmental sustainability and human well-being.

SWIFT’s overall objective is to foster transitions towards sustainable, balanced and inclusive development of rural areas in Europe by favouring the deployment of women-led innovations (WLI) acting for change in agriculture, promoting gender equality in rural areas from an intersectional, feminist and human rights-based perspective. SWIFT pursues this by engaging in applied feminist innovation studies research better reflecting feminist and human-rights based approaches. This will enable to facilitate a change of framing in agriculture to address the social realities that perpetuate inequalities. Women, in all of their diversity, play a central role in agriculture and food systems. Their knowledge, skills, labour and leadership, however, are frequently invisible and undervalued. At present, the European agricultural sector is characterized by high levels of inequality. The multiple barriers to gender equality in European agriculture are socio-cultural, economic and political, and perpetuate women’s inequality within the mutually constituting ‘productive’ sphere of farming outputs and in the ‘reproductive’ sphere of unpaid and undervalued labour that occurs on the farm, in the family and community. Some examples include i) unequal access to land and productive resources, that shape and limit women’s participation in agriculture, constructing gender roles and identities and resulting, among other things, in ii) women under-representation in agricultural organizations and holding very few decision-making positions; iii) current agricultural education and training that reinforce stereotypes about farming as a male activity and which do not encourage young women to pursue agricultural careers; iv) social closure, characterised by interactional dynamics of discrimination, exclusion and/or harassment, that lead to women being discouraged from taking up tasks or acquiring relevant farming skills. The structural gender inequalities in agriculture are acutely felt by social groups that experience multiple and intersecting forms of oppression, including migrant farmworkers and LGBTIQ+ farmers. These intersecting forms of discrimination have not yet been extensively documented, however, they constitute significant barriers to transformative change in rural areas in Europe. One of the main difficulties for gender mainstreaming in agricultural policies is the framing of food. The EU’s primary commitment to purely economic measures of viability of farming businesses reflects the idea of food as a commodity that does not include the forms of farming that tend to be led by women. The framing of food as a commodity also fails to capture the commitments that have been made to the realisation of the right to adequate food. SWIFT will contribute to gender mainstreaming in agricultural and food policies by providing theoretical and practical tools (feminist farm viability indicators and Gender responsive budgeting in policies) to favor a change of framing in those policies that will facilitate the development and implementation of alternative framings of food. Methodologically, SWIFT adopts a feminist, human rights-based, participatory and inclusive research methodology that applies an intersectional perspective, thereby rendering visible diverse experiences of inequality and giving a voice to those who are most marginalised. SWIFT aims to reinforce and amplify innovations led by marginalised actors to confront unequal social, economic and political structures in European agricultural and food systems. We defined WLI in agriculture as grassroots innovations built to challenge structural inequalities in agriculture in rural areas. Many of the WLI that are the focus of SWIFT have emerged under the broad umbrella of alternative food networks and have demands connected to the human right to adequate food. Through the analysis of WLI, SWIFT will study if and how agroecological approaches to food systems can promote gender equality in r

FRANCESCA aims to provide crucial support to the EU furniture industry as it moves towards greater circularity. The project's primary objective is to pioneer innovative circular solutions for furniture, encompassing the whole funiture life cycle, including pre-use (from design to delivery), use (maintain, reuse, repair), and post-use (refurbish, repurpose, re-manufacture, re-distribute, and recycle). FRANCESCA will develop and use enabling supporting solutions that address key design, materials, and business model challenges. Concretely, the project develops, tests and disseminates a circular furniture design decision support tool, bridging circular principles with market-based instruments (environmental certifications and standards); it investigates, scopes, and tests alternative biobased materials to accelerate closed-loop strategies by implementing a dedicated industrial symbiosis platform; it designs, prototypes and implements a set of complementary circular business models; develops circular ecosystem management guidance and integrate circular value creation mechanisms enabled by Digital Product Passports. These enabling tools feed a set of three Circular Demonstrators, each focusing on a key circular strategy (design, material innovation, and service business model). Sustainability assessements and environmental technology validation of the novel solutions demonstrate their sustainability potential at scale. Finally, learnings from the project are cristallised in a capacity building toolkit for life-long learning strategies and a set of policy recommendations that are disseminated at EU level. The pragmatic, holistic and hand-on approach, steered by sectoral needs (manufacturers, retailers, CSOs) and supported by a complementary set of design, materials, business and sustainablity experts breaks down the systemic barriers to circular transition and reduces the circularity gap faced by the sector, thus creating long lasting sustainable impact.