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Developing EU advisory networks on forestry

European Comission

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Summary
17 October 2023
28 February 2024
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For profit
Individuals
Not for profit (incl. NGOs)
Public sector
R&D and Higher Education
Afghanistan
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Angola
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Iceland
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Research, Development and Innovation Agricultural Sciences
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Overview

ExpectedOutcome :

In support of the European Green Deal, the EU climate policy, the common agricultural policy (CAP) and the EU forest strategy for 2030 objectives, the successful proposal will focus on advisor exchanges across the EU to increase the speed of knowledge creation and sharing, capacity building, of demonstration of innovative solutions, as well as helping to bring them into practice, accelerating the necessary transitions. Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) in which advisors are fully integrated are key drivers to speed up innovation and the uptake of research results by farmers.

Transformative changes such as the changes required within the European Green Deal are dynamic processes that require appropriate governance of AKIS actors. Advisors are key actors with a role in providing strong guidance and with a big influence over producers’ decisions. A novelty in the post-2020 CAP plans[1] is that advisors now must be integrated within the Member States’ AKIS, and that the scope of their actions has become much broader. They must now be able to cover economic, environmental and social domains, as well as be up-to-date on science and technology. They should be able to translate this knowledge into opportunities, and use and adapt this knowledge to specific local circumstances. This specific topic focuses on the important role advisors can play related to more sustainable forestry in the future.

Project results are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

  • Progress towards the most urgent policy objectives linked to Cluster 6, as well as the European Green Deal, and in particular the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 and the new CAP, with a view to improve sustainability of forestry, help raise awareness and tackle societal challenges;
  • Support to the CAP cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing of knowledge, innovation and digitalisation, and encouraging their uptake[2];
  • Development of interaction with regional policymakers and of a potential EU network to discuss institutional challenges to practical forestry issues, such as bottlenecks, lock-ins, political inertia, ambiguous regulations, inequality between Member States and power imbalances;
  • Production of supporting services and materials, including knowledge networks and peer-to-peer counselling, master classes, advice modules, communication and education materials, effective business models, etc. to facilitate the upscaling of sustainable forest management;
  • Acceleration of the introduction, spread and implementation in practice of innovative solutions related to forestry, in particular by:
  • creating added value by better linking research, education, advisors and foresters, and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge across the EU;
  • learning from innovation actors and projects, resulting in faster sharing and implementation of ready-to-use innovative solutions, spreading them to practitioners and communicating to the scientific community the bottom-up research needs of practice. Scope :

Proposals should address the following activities:

  • Connect advisors possessing a broad and extensive network of foresters across all EU Member States in an EU advisory network dedicated to forestry, including forestry techniques which support a higher level of sustainability, with a view to sharing experiences on how to best tackle the issues, building on the outcomes of the EIP-AGRI Focus Groups and Workshops as well as the Horizon 2020 Thematic Networks related to forestry.
  • Share effective and novel approaches among the EU advisory network on forestry, which are sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social aspects.
  • Gather or develop short-, mid- and long-term strategic visions for forests and forestry in the EU, taking into account regional differences, regional policy frameworks, climate change, supply and demand, monitoring needs, etc.
  • Fill gaps on emerging advisory topics beyond the classical sectoral advice, which is useful in particular in relation with the new obligation for Member States to integrate advisors within their AKIS and who must cover a much broader scope than in the past.
  • Provide overall support related to knowledge creation, organisation and sharing.
  • Take strong account of cost-benefit elements. Collect and document good examples in this regard, connecting with foresters and other actors across related value chains in Member States to be able to take into account financial aspects and local conditions. Select the best practices, learn about the key success factors, possible quick wins and make them available for (local) exploitation, to ensure financial win-wins for producers, citizens and intermediate actors.
  • Integrate the advisors of the EU forestry network into their Member State AKIS as much as possible. They should encourage as innovation brokers innovative projects on forestry in EIP Operational Groups. They should give hands-on training to foresters and local advisors, lead national thematic and learning networks on the subject, deliver and implement action plans to make forestry more sustainable, connect with education and ensure broad communication, support peer-to-peer consulting, develop on-farm demonstrations and demo films distributed widely via social media, and provide specific back-office support for generalist advisors within the national/regional AKIS.
  • Explore if the activities of the EU advisory network on forestry can be scaled up at the level of a number of Member States under a cooperative format. Wherever possible, develop digital advisory tools for common use across the EU. Determine whether common tools can be created to incentivise the implementation of the learnings from this project.
  • Include all 27 EU Member States in the EU advisory network, using local AKIS connections which can more accurately interpret the national/regional contexts to help develop the best solutions for that Member State or region. Use the support of the Member States’ knowledge and innovation experts of the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group to discuss project strategy and progress in the various stages of the 2 projects.
  • Projects should run at least 5 years. They must implement the multi-actor approach, with a majority of partners being forestry advisors with frequent field experience.
  • Provide all outcomes and materials to the European Innovation Partnership 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability' (EIP-AGRI), including in the common 'practice abstract' format for EU wide dissemination, as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24) in the requested formats.

[1] Art 13(2) of the post 2020 CAP regulation.

[2] Art 5 CAP post 2020 proposal.

Eligibility

General conditions

  1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

  1. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide .

  1. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes

Legal entities established in non-associated third countries, including low to middle income non-associated third countries, may participate as a beneficiary in this Coordination and support action if their participation is considered essential for implementing the action by the granting authority.

The following additional eligibility criteria apply: The proposals must use the multi-actor approach. See definition of the multi-actor approach in the introduction to this Work Programme part.

  1. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes

  2. Evaluation and award:

  • Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes

  • Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual

  • Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes

  1. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes

Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum as defined in the Decision of 7 July 2021 authorising the use of lump sum contributions under the Horizon Europe Programme – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027) – and in actions under the Research and Training Programme of the European Atomic Energy Community (2021-2025). [[This decision is available on the Funding and Tenders Portal, in the reference documents section for Horizon Europe, under ‘Simplified costs decisions’ or through this link: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/guidance/ls-decision_he_en.pdf]].

Specific conditions

  1. Specific conditions: described in the specific topic of the Work Programme

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard application form (HE CSA)

Standard evaluation form — will be used with the necessary adaptations

Standard evaluation form (HE CSA)

MGA

Lump Sum MGA v1.0

Call-specific instructions

Detailed budget table (HE LS)

Guidance: "Lump sums - what do I need to know?"

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 9. Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

HE Main Work Programme 2023–2024 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

HE Framework Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695

HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

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28 February 2024