Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BrightSpace (BrightSpace: Designing a Roadmap for Effective and Sustainable Strategies for Assessing and Addressing the Challenges of EU Agriculture to Navigate within a Safe and Just Operating Space)
Période du rapport: 2022-11-01 au 2024-04-30
The European Green Deal (EGD) aims, among others, at increasing the contribution of EU agriculture to climate change action, to improve the management of natural resources, to ensure a fair economic return for farmers and to reinforce the protection of biodiversity. Current trends show that reaching EGD agricultural targets will not be an easy task. EU agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were reducing up until the 2010s and have slightly increased since. Considerable changes in farming practices and systems are required to achieve further substantial reductions, including a reduction in the use of nitrogen fertilization. Biodiversity erosion occurs due to increasingly specialised agricultural systems and rural landscapes, using larger plots of land and the widespread application of chemical inputs. Soil degradation and nutrient flows - notably nitrogen - in water and the atmosphere have reached alarming levels. Past trends show that it will be extremely difficult to achieve the climatic and environmental targets of the EGD without substantial inflexion of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Monitoring the progress towards the objectives and specific targets of the EGD requires their specification and operationalization in the form of a framework that takes the relevant ecological, economic, and social aspects into account. These objectives are interdependent and while often aligned, they may also compete. The European research project BrightSpace addresses this challenge as expressed in the Work Programme Topic HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-12 – “EU agriculture within the Safe and Just Operating Space (SJOS) and planetary boundaries”. The ambition and overarching objective of BrightSpace is to design effective and sustainable strategies to navigate within a SJOS. Synergies and trade-offs between socio-economic and environmental outcomes are brought together in this concept, where the Safe component reflects the bio-physical boundaries of the ecosystem and the Just component reflects the requirements for the well-being of the involved people. The BrightSpace project is realized through 12 work packages (WPs) over a period of five-years.
Among the first steps in BrightSpace was the development of a conceptual framework for the SJOS, based literature reviews on planetary boundaries for the Safe operating space and indicator frameworks addressing social and economic aspects (see diagram). The initial framework was aligned with goals and targets put forward in policy programmes like CAP and EGD (see diagram). In the process, stakeholders and modelling teams were consulted in thematic seminars and workshops to arrive at an SJOS concept, which is described in a dedicated report (Deliverable D1.1). In parallel, a concept for data collection, processing and the technical implementation was developed. This Brightspace Database and Monitoring System (BSDMS) ensures efficient version control, real-time visualization and open access to data. Household- and farm-level data has been obtained, including the survey on income and living conditions (SILC), the household budget survey (HBS), which provides harmonized household-level data on income, employment, and food expenditures for a representative household sample for each EU member state. At farm level, data from Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) and Farm Structure Survey (FSS) were obtained. To link the SJOS and farming practices, literature reviews on impacts of technical and policy changes in the past on aspects of the SJOS, like biodiversity, were conducted. First findings indicate the relevance of technology usage, farm and field structural change, consumer preferences and waste. The need for specific empirical work to generate useful estimates that can be used to quantify and model the identified relationships in ex-ante models, has also been identified. The modelling teams in BrightSpace developed a business-as-usual baseline, to identify critical differences between the models’ projections, to explore concepts for model interactions, and to align research topics with modelling tools.
The work in BrightSpace is structured in four pillars: identifying DETERMINANTS of the SJOS, projecting FUTURE trajectories, providing GUIDANCE for policy debates, and establishing a stakeholder PLATFORM to ensure timeliness and relevance of the results. Expected advances beyond the state of the art are structured below accordingly:
1 - To better understand the determinants of the SJOS, comprehensive literature reviews were conducted, identifying processes on supply-, demand-, and policy sides. On the supply side, these include processes like structural change of farms and fields or farming intensity. On the demand side, consumer diets, preferences, and waste are covered. This helps identifying processes and drivers crucial to consider in the ex-ante model activities and to steer further empirical work.
2 - To better model the SJOS, BrightSpace aims to improve and extend several existing models and develop new models, guided by the work in Pillar 1. The modelling teams have started to update the models in the toolbox to include and project indicators related for the SJOS, like income distribution, employment, and food security and nutrition, as well as biodiversity.
3 - To better evaluate the critical technical, institutional, and consumer pathways to SJOS, a systemic approach including artificial intelligence-based technology scans, literature reviews, and qualitative comparative analyses was applied to identify and cluster promising technologies. The results underline the role of technological progress in achieving the SJOS.
4 - The establishment of the BrightSpace Stakeholder Platform has been initialized.
A Capacity Building Plan was set up, including:
- the establishment of a master module on AgEcon modelling;-
- the provision of training sessions on modelling, e.g. AGMEMOD, CAPRI;
- the establishment of the Agricultural Model Young Researcher Network (AMYRN)
In addition, regular networking and collaboration with other Horizon Europe projects was established.
1 - To better understand the determinants of the SJOS, comprehensive literature reviews were conducted, identifying processes on supply-, demand-, and policy sides. On the supply side, these include processes like structural change of farms and fields or farming intensity. On the demand side, consumer diets, preferences, and waste are covered. This helps identifying processes and drivers crucial to consider in the ex-ante model activities and to steer further empirical work.
2 - To better model the SJOS, BrightSpace aims to improve and extend several existing models and develop new models, guided by the work in Pillar 1. The modelling teams have started to update the models in the toolbox to include and project indicators related for the SJOS, like income distribution, employment, and food security and nutrition, as well as biodiversity.
3 - To better evaluate the critical technical, institutional, and consumer pathways to SJOS, a systemic approach including artificial intelligence-based technology scans, literature reviews, and qualitative comparative analyses was applied to identify and cluster promising technologies. The results underline the role of technological progress in achieving the SJOS.
4 - The establishment of the BrightSpace Stakeholder Platform has been initialized.
A Capacity Building Plan was set up, including:
- the establishment of a master module on AgEcon modelling;-
- the provision of training sessions on modelling, e.g. AGMEMOD, CAPRI;
- the establishment of the Agricultural Model Young Researcher Network (AMYRN)
In addition, regular networking and collaboration with other Horizon Europe projects was established.