FACCE-Evolve - Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change Coordination and Support Action 2

Project Information

FACCE-Evolve

Grant agreement ID: 652612

DOI

10.3030/652612

Project closed

EC signature date 20 February 2015

Start date 1 March 2015

End date 29 February 2020

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 3 328 035,92

EU contribution

€ 2 000 000,00

Coordinated by

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT
France

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FACCE-Evolve (FACCE-Evolve - Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change Coordination and Support Action 2)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-02-29

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

FACCE-JPI began in 2010 with the aim to provide a research base to address the interlinked societal challenges of sustainable agriculture and food security under climate change. FACCE-JPI brings together 24 countries (20 Member States, 3 associated countries and one third country) around a common vision and mission. These, as well as the corresponding research needs, are set out in the FACCE-JPI Strategic Research Agenda and implemented through successive Implementation Plans. FACCE-JPI aims to support the alignment of research activities across borders, the exploration of new research needs and the implementation of new research in order to respond to the needs of policy makers, end-users and citizens.
FACCE Evolve has supported the work of the executive secretariat of FACCE-JPI in the 5 year period between 2015 to 2020. The FACCE-JPI Secretariat implements the core activities of FACCE-JPI such as preparation of strategic documents, the running of the boards (Governing Board, Scientific Advisory Board and Stakeholder Advisory Board), communication and valorisation of results, European and international relations or monitoring and evaluation. It also oversees the implementation of FACCE-JPI actions, particularly in the planning and scoping phases of research actions, and in the carrying out of workshops. The secretariat responds to the requests of the Governing Board while also fulfilling the work foreseen in the workplan of the project FACCE-Evolve.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

"During FACCE-Evolve, the Strategic Research Agenda has been updated (2016, 2020) and 2 Implementation Plans (2016-2018, 2018-2020) have been published with a third one under development.
To date FACCE-JPI has put in place over 10 research actions, including Knowledge Hubs, joint calls, ERA-NETs, an EJP co-fund, and innovative alignment mechanisms. The ERA-NETs SURPLUS, ERA-GAS, SusCrop and FOSC were developed as well as the EJP Soil. A joint action with the Water JPI gave rise to 21 projects under WaterWorks 2015. Four alignment actions were put into place (TAP Soil and the Knowledge Network on Sustainable Intensification, Knowledge Hub on Food and Nutrition Security and Sci-Pol Hub). Between 2010 and 2018, FACCE-JPI, member countries budgeted over 85 Mio€ to actions granting projects with over 112 Mio€.
Additionally, FACCE-JPI has organised 16 workshops (including exploratory, preparatory and joint workshops) to map current research, explore new areas, scope research actions or valorise research project results, and has contributed to the organisation of three high level events.
FACCE-JPI also continued to carry out the core activities including:
- the organisation of 3 Governing Board meetings per year, 2-3 each Scientific Advisory Board and Stakeholder Advisory Board meetings per year;
- European and international relations, resulting in a strategy for European and international cooperation that gave rise to the addition of New Zealand as an associate member and multiple collaborations with other actions;
- the preparation for self-sustainability;
- monitoring and evaluation of individual actions and FACCE-JPI as a whole (2 reports prepared in 2016 and 2020).
The emphasis was also placed on communication and valorisation in order to provide information on FACCE-JPI’s activities and disseminate their results, through:
- Website: 139 new items were published on the FACCE-JPI website;
- Social media: 761 items were tweeted, live tweeted or retweeted on the FACCE-JPI twitter account;
- Newsletter: 9 newsletters were issued;
- Brochures: 4 brochures were produced (FACCE-JPI in Brief, FACCE-JPI Fact sheet, Book of abstracts and Joint Knowledge Creation – Towards a sustainable agriculture in a changing climate);
- Press releases and articles: three press releases were issued (“Grand Debate on Nutrition Security”, “SRA and IP, together with the event announcement of “International soil research – Opportunities for synergy and cooperation with FACCE-JPI”” and “Researchers funded through FACCE-JPI join forces to provide recommendations to tackle climate change”) and two articles were published (“Soils Management Under Climate Change Mitigation"" and “Coordinating research to overcome the challenges of agriculture, food security and climate change”);
- Valorisation workshops and related publications: a pilot valorisation workshop was organised, two valorisation workshops were co-organised and one related publication was issued (“Synthesis of the valorisation survey FACCE-JPI funded projects”);
- Policy briefs: input was provided to three policy briefs produced by BiodivERsA (""Policy tools to manage synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services"", “Green infrastructure within agricultural landscapes strengthens the supply of ecosystem services” and “Green infrastructure within agricultural landscapes strengthens the supply of ecosystem services”);
- Other: an interactive tool was developed to feature a visually intuitive organisation of the FACCE-JPI projects with information about each of them and a card game was created to provide information on FACCE-JPI to a larger audience."

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

FFACCE-JPI intends to continue its progress on aligning EU research programming and generating new high impact research to contribute to tackling the societal challenge. It is now operating as a self-sustained initiative.
FACCE-JPI has contributed significantly to European research programming in its remit and its alignment across countries. It has given rise to excellent research as documented through an extensive bibliometric study. It is well recognised that impact on a societal level takes years if not decades and we expect that the full benefits of FACCE-JPI and the work done in Evolve will continue to be manifested well into the future.