Integrated assessment of land use and biomass demands to contribute to a sustainable healthy and fair bioeconomy

• Improve understanding of direct and indirect implications of current and future regional, national or EU policies and targets on land and biomass use, including an assessment of existing and emerging trade-offs, using and improving existing databases with high resolution data.
• Develop methodologies as well as tools for national and regional policy- and decision-makers to carry out integrated bioeconomy assessments of land and biomass use. The assessments will integrate existing and future EU, national and regional climate, environmental and food policies with projections on industrial biomass demand, and assess their implications on land and biomass use, taking into account trade-offs and synergies.
• Using the methodologies, quantify and project the land and biomass use and its climate mitigation potential, including the substitution effect of bio-based products and land impacts of diets, in at least four case study regions covering different socio-economic situations and climate/ecological zones in the EU and Associated Countries. The data should also cover, but not be excluded to, land use intensity and management types and their respective areas as well as biomass stocks and flows.
• Take into account biophysical and as far as possible, legal and socioeconomic constraints determining possible land use and biomass potentials.
• Seek to understand and identify factors determining land management practices and enabling nature-based solutions that maximise the co-production of ecosystem services, biodiversity restoration and preservation, enhanced climate mitigation and net primary production.
• Seek to understand and identify optimum/sustainable land-dependent and land-independent food supply for healthy, safe and sustainable diets.

The proposals must use the multi-actor approach by involving a wide diversity of bioeconomy actors and conducting trans-disciplinary research.

Where relevant, activities should build and expand on the results of past and ongoing research projects. The project requires an active collaboration with the JRC on the development of the necessary methods and approaches for the activities described in the scope of the topic.