Specific Challenge:

While Europe is making progress in reducing environmental pressures and addressing climate change challenges, current environmental policies and technology efficiency gains are not likely to be sufficient to address the substantial challenges it faces in protecting its natural capital, stimulating resource-efficient, low-carbon and climate-resilient economic and social development and safeguarding its population from environmental health risks^[1]. The challenge of underpinning and accelerating the transformation of our economy and society to achieve more sustainable development paths has a planetary scale. The UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change have given new impetus to tackling these challenges at a global level.

Operating a systemic transformation for sustainable development requires the mobilisation of all relevant actors: public authorities at various levels, manufacturing industry and business at large, academia, research institutes, finance and insurance, non-governmental organisations and civil society. A properly aligned European Research Area, which is also open to the world, can make an essential difference in enabling a transformative sustainability agenda to take shape. The alignment of research and innovation agendas is therefore crucial in bringing about the necessary transformations.

Scope:

Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from the participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing a joint call for proposals resulting in grants to third parties with EU co-funding in this area. Proposers are requested to include additional joint calls without EU co-funding as well as other activities such as the establishment or consolidation of a pan-European network of funding agencies and other key players in Europe, building on previous experience and avoiding overlaps with other initiatives, support to mutual learning and training, exchange of good practice, researcher mobility and equal opportunities (e.g. through EURAXESS) and better careers in the field. Wherever relevant, actions should involve social sciences and humanities.

Actions should focus on one of the following issues: emerging pollutants; international cooperation on disaster risk reduction and multi-hazard risk management, with emphasis on environmental change; health, environment and climate change; conservation and protection of cultural heritage; biodiversity and climate change; conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems and their biodiversity, including a focus on aquatic systems; enhancing urban transformation capacities/circular cities; sustainable supply of raw materials; next generation of climate science in Europe.

Synergies should be ensured with relevant public-public partnerships such as the JPI Water, JPI Climate, JPI Cultural Heritage and/or the BiodivERsA ERA-NET, as well as with international programmes such as the Belmont Forum, as appropriate. Participation of legal entities from international partner countries and/or regions is encouraged in the joint call as well as in other joint activities including additional joint calls without EU co-funding. Participants from this/these country/ies may request a Union contribution (on the basis of the ERA-NET unit cost) for the coordination costs of additional activities.

Expected Impact:

The project results are expected to contribute to:

• effective trans-national, pan-European research networking and synergies among national/regional and EU research programmes in the areas addressed;
• new knowledge-intensive products and services;
• improved evidence-based policy through the interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary science-policy interface and links with international efforts and fora on the areas addressed.