DISTENDER will provide integrated strategies by building a methodological framework that guide the integration of climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation strategies through participatory approaches in ways that respond to the impacts and risks of climate change (CC), supported by quantitative and qualitative analysis that facilitates the understanding of interactions, synergies and trade-offs. Holistic approaches to mitigation and adaptation must be tailored to the context-specific situation and this requires a flexible and participatory planning process to ensure legitimate and salient action, carried out by all important stakeholders. DISTENDER will develop a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative socio-economic-climate scenarios through a facilitated participatory process that integrates bottom-up knowledge and locally-relevant drivers with top-down information from the global European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and downscaled Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC. A cross-sectorial and multi-scale impact assessment modelling toolkit will be developed to analyse the complex interactions over multiple sectors, including an economic evaluation framework. The economic impact of the different efforts will be analyse, including damage claim settlement and how do sectoral activity patterns change under various scenarios considering indirect and cascading effects. It is an innovative project combining three key concepts: cross-scale, integration/harmonization and robustness checking. DISTENDER will follow a pragmatic approach applying methodologies and toolkits across a range of European case studies (six core case studies and five followers) that reflect a cross-section of the challenges posed by CC adaptation and mitigation. The knowledge generated by DISTENDER will be offered by a Decision Support System (DSS) which will include guidelines, manuals, easy-to-use tools and experiences from the application of the cases studies.

Agroforestry (AF) is the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation (trees or shrubs) with crop and/or animal systems to benefit from the resulting ecological and economic interactions. Research activities developed by AFINET partners indicates that appropriate application of AF principles and practices is a key avenue to help the European Union to achieve more sustainable methods of food and fibre production, producing both profits for farmers and environmental benefits. However up to now exists a lack of AF knowledge among end-users that prevent the correct implementation of these practices. In this sense AFINET will act at EU level in order to take up research results into agricultural practice, improving knowledge exchange between scientists and practitioners on AF activities, with a special focus on silvoarable and silvopastoral systems design, management, and production and profitability. To achieve this objective AFINET consortium proposes an innovative methodology based on: (i) The creation of a EU reservoir of scientific and practical knowledge of AF with an end-user-friendly access (the “Knowledge Cloud”). (ii) The creation of a European Interregional network (composed of “Regional Agroforestry Innovation Networks” - RAINs) considering a multi-actor approach (including farmers, policy makers, advisory services, extension services, etc.), and articulated through the figure of the “Innovation Broker”. These RAINs groups will be interconnected in nine strategic regions of Europe from Spain, UK, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France and Finland, representing different climatic, geographical, social, and cultural conditions at European level. In addition, to create a greater user acceptance of the collected solutions and an intensive dissemination to end-users, AFINET will be linked to other networks, initiatives and policy instruments at regional, national and European level with a specific focus on the EIP-AGRI implementation.

The objective of the ResAlliance is to facilitate information and knowledge flow and increase the awareness, understanding and capacity of farmers and foresters on landscape resilience in Mediterranean countries. More specifically, ResAlliance will gather and assess knowledge and practice needs, gaps, barriers, solutions and good practices to achieve resilient landscapes, with special emphasis on measures against hazards caused by climate change. It will also prepare and facilitate stakeholder engagement through interactive and innovative participation methods. It will finally transfer the knowledge and activate regional landscape resilience governance, with special emphasis in five Mediterranean regions. ResAlliance will create and animate a Mediterranean thematic network on landscape resilience (“LandNet”) for forestry and agriculture. The LandNet will continuously identify, engage and grow new cooperation and networks to access, improve and increase the knowledge of solutions and good practices. The LandNet will prepare the context-specific knowledge and engage and train farmers, foresters and other key stakeholders for knowledge transfer of managerial, technological, financial or governance solutions. The work programme will allow capturing and interpreting most urgent needs while identifying and coupling unknown best practices in research and practice with these needs; compiling a comprehensive description of the state of current farming and forestry practices on landscape resilience to summarise and explain the added-value, the relevance and the cost/benefit aspects of the practices collected, avoiding duplication; delivering an extensive range of useful, applicable, appealing and easy-to-access material in many formats, including EIP-AGRI, EU FarmBook and existing dissemination channels most consulted by farmers and foresters in the countries; and building synergies with OGs and innovation groups from EIP-AGRI, and implement multi-actor approach.

Life on Earth thrives on the foundation of healthy soils, including topsoil and subsoil. While extensive research has focused on the topsoil layer, the subsoils remain largely unexplored. By bringing together key experts and practitioners, DeepHorizon aims to unlock knowledge of the subsoil in critical zone in order to deploy ecosystemic solutions to improve subsoil functions for soil health. DeepHorizon goal is to develop tools that will enable practitioners, land managers and policy makers to access subsoil properties, subsoil functions, soil health indicators and financial decision support tools to promote sustainable subsoil management. Through a multi-actors approach from farmers to policy makers, DeepHorizon will (1) collect and use existing data on subsoils; (2) generate new knowledge through extensive subsoil sampling and experimental effort (40 core sites) to measure biological, physical and chemical properties of different subsoils with contrasted management, and different soil type (organic/mineral), land uses (forest, grassland, cropland and semi-natural areas) and climate ; (3) use innovative process-based models to quantify actual and potential subsoil functioning, and soil health indicators; and (4) involve practitioners and stakeholders in the project through living labs and partner networks to co-create, test and deploy innovative solutions to improve subsoil functions over 100 test sites across Europe. By creating its own community of end-users and key stakeholders, DeepHorizon will ultimately promote sustainable management practices, policy-incentives and guidelines at EU level for increasing carbon storage and ecosystem services in subsoils and disseminate and communicate materials to a better understanding of subsoil relevance to the general public. By improving knowledge and consideration of subsoils in general, DeepHorizon will enhance soil health and pave the way for a more sustainable and resilient environment in Europe.