Projects
PHOENIX
Climate change is today's most urgent geopolitical challenge for Europe, and the entire world. It is an unprecedented challenge, one in which different territories, social groups, stakeholders will have to coordinate to a scale never seen before.
For this reason, we think that the ordinary instruments of representative democracy will not cut it: climate change will not stop at administrative borders.
As we need to foster environmental and social governance, we must not forget the role of democratic governance in stabilising paradigmatic changes, such the one that the European Green Deal will entail.
In the last decades, a whole new host of 'democratic innovations' has emerged to assist in such processes. Democratic innovations allow citizens to meaningfully participate in political debate, finding more inclusive policy solutions.
With PHOENIX we want to raise the bar even higher, by hybridising participatory and deliberative practices.
By doing this, we should be able to design democratic governance procedures that will allow both to collect the positions of people that usually do not engage in politics, as well as reaching a consensus on the best policies for the territories under investigation.
The EcoStack Project
Stacking of ecosystem services: mechanisms and interactions for optimal crop protection, pollination enhancement and productivity
Agriculture has to face the great challenge of balancing the demand for high productivity, imposed by the global increase of human population, with environmental impacts and social acceptability of new production strategies. EcoStack will develop ecologically, economically and socially sustainable crop production strategies via stacking of biodiversity service providers and bio-inspired tools for crop protection, within and around agricultural fields, in order enhance sustainability of food production systems across Europe.
will pave the way towards healthy and sustainable beekeeping within the European Union by following a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach. Merging data from within and around beehives as well as wider socioeconomic conditions, B-GOOD will develop and test innovative tools to perform risk assessments according to the Health Status Index (HSI).
B-GOOD has the overall goal to provide guidance for beekeepers and help them make better and more informed decisions.