Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

PALUdiculture large-Scale DEMOnstrationS

Project description

Paludiculture for sustainable agriculture in wetlands

Paludiculture is a form of wet agriculture that integrates the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from drained peatlands through water-table management with continued land use and biomass production in wetlands. The EU-funded PALUS DEMOS project will create three large-scale demonstration sites for paludiculture across three strategically chosen European countries to explore new agricultural business models, develop markets for paludiculture products, increase employment, and enhance biodiversity and water quality, aligning with the European Green Deal. The project will inspire various stakeholders by showing how paludiculture can preserve peat soils, provide economic opportunities, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will use a bottom-up approach, create sustainable practices at these sites, stimulate the market, and provide policy recommendations to address potential challenges.

Objective

PALUS DEMOS will establish 3 large scale paludiculture demonstration sites to provide insights in new agricultural business models, increased employment, and improved biodiversity and water quality in line with the objectives of the EU Green Deal. PALUS DEMOS will inspire entrepreneurs in agriculture, biobased manufacturing industry, communities, politicians, water and nature organisations and many others, that paludiculture will provide a new direction to preserve peat pastures, carbon stores and reduce GHG emissions. The proposed bottom-up approach (agriculture feeds science) is an opportunity that can improve social, economic and environmental sustainability, offering a future-proof model for agricultural entrepreneurs. Our demonstrators will act as lighthouses or beacons for local stakeholders and others from right across Europe & beyond. The focus of these demonstrators, supported by many of Europes leading experts, is to develop a range of best practices and land uses in strategic locations in three European countries ideally placed to spearhead the establishment of paludiculture practice and markets across Europe in a climate smart farming way. Beyond state of the art, we will establish co-created sustainable paludiculture practices at each of the three demonstrators. This will be fully supported by policy recommendations identifying enablers, barriers and policy gaps. We will work with stakeholders to develop (socio-)economic models using the quadruple helix innovation system, including government, industry, academia, and society. Our work will be supported by the development of long term business plans, it will include end users of the produced biomass and will be supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools co-created with stakeholders leading us towards an evidence based policy approach to paludiculture innovation.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY
Net EU contribution
€ 1 574 375,00
Address
UNIVERSITY ROAD
H91 Galway
Ireland

See on map

Region
Ireland Northern and Western West
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 1 574 375,00

Participants (25)