Humanity is facing enormous environmental challenges: biodiversity decline, climate change, ocean acidification, sea level rise, overpopulation, etc. One of the first and more successful responses provided by science to address these challenges is the collecting of long-term series of biophysical variables. During the last four decades we have created a diverse ecosystem of environmental research infrastructures (RIs) covering a wide range of spatial and thematic scales. The information gathered by RIs has helped us to understand the structure and functioning of natural systems at local and regional scales. However, this is not enough to address the overwhelming challenge that we face: to understand and simulate the structure and functioning of the Earth System under a global change scenario.
We need to add new “superpowers” to the already existing RIs in order to address the abovementioned global challenges. These new capabilities are related to social abilities such as: empathy, cooperation and synergy. It is not only about strengthening the technical functioning of the already existing RIs, we need to make them work together. Environmental international RIs should be open and available to others, affirming to others, should not feel threatened that others are able and good.
The COOP+ project (H2020 Scientific Cooperation Action) has followed up the actions started by COOPEUS (FP7) to foster the cooperation among environmental RIs. The general goal of COOP+ was to strengthen the links and coordination of the ESFRI RIs related to Marine Science (EMSO), Arctic and Atmospheric Research (EISCAT), Carbon Observation (ICOS) and Biodiversity (LifeWatch), with international counterparts and to leverage international scientific cooperation and data exchange with non-EU countries. During the time span of COOP+ (March 2016 to July 2018) we did our best to implement the abovementioned philosophy in the cooperation agenda of environment RIs.
During the project life, we filled the term "cooperation" with real life problems. COOP+ activities focused on environmental Global Challenges: polyhedral and sometimes wicked problems that threaten the sustainability of our modern societies from a social and environmental perspective. COOP+ used the concept of Global Challenges as "cooperation threads", incorporating the lessons learned in COOPEUS. This reinforced the cross-disciplinary view, adding participants from other regions and complementary disciplines. We promoted an open coordination framework for Global Cooperation, based on scientific excellence and win-win collaborations opportunities with third parties.
The most relevant conclusion, once COOP+ has finished, is that there is still a long way towards an effective cooperation among RIs. Despite the huge effort done and the positive performance of the project, I (as coordinator) think that we have only started to began to understand the social and behavioral mechanisms that hinder cooperation. Using global challenges as topics to foster the cooperation has been a good idea, because it has "forced" us to put the focus in real problems.
