COORDINATION AND SUPPORT ACTIONS PROMOTING BIOECONOMY
The Communication COM (2012) 60 final “Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe” aims at shifting the European economy towards a greater and more sustainable use of renewable resources. The Bioeconomy offers huge potential to tackle societal challenges such as resource efficiency, climate change, maintaining European competitiveness and creation of jobs.
The role of Coordination and Support Actions (CSAs) is fundamental in supporting bio-based industries grow and the market-uptake, because these projects tackle strategic aspects and cross-cutting challenges fundamental to boost the Bioeconomy.
For this reason, after the adoption of the Bioeconomy Strategy in 2012, several CSAs have been fundedby the 6th and 7th Framework Programmes, Horizon 2020 including the BBI JU, Interreg and other European programmes, producing a considerable amount of valuable knowledge, networks and activities.
GLOBAL, INTEGRATED AND STRUCTURED KNOWLEDGE MISSING
Despite of the considerable amount of high-quality knowledge generated by the CSAs in the different programmes, a global, integrated and structured vision of their results is missing. CSAs outputs are often not easily available, neither integrated among CSAs, nor transparent and promoted among the stakeholders. Especially for the Bio-based industries it is not easy to directly profit, or even be aware, of the CSAs results and therefore to appreciate the added value of this type of projects for their business. Moreover, to create a coherent and stimulating ‘environment’ for a sustainable bio-based industry in Europe, better knowledge circulation and collaboration among CSAs, funded under different programmes and the scientific community, investors, trade unions and civil society, represented in the Quadruple Helix should be encouraged to provide a global picture, maximise the impact of CSAs results and provide an integrated overview of gaps that should be addressed, providing evidence-based recommendations for the incoming calls.
Therefore, to ensure that all relevant bioeconomy stakeholders (policy-makers, business, investors the scientific community and others) are put in a better position to ensure a sustainable, strong and competitive bio-based industry in Europe, better knowledge access and circulation of results from past CSA projects, as well as increased cooperation between CSAs is needed, to the benefit of the bio-based industries at the regional, national and European level.
Knowledge circulation and collaboration among CSAs, funded under different programmes and the scientific community, investors, trade unions and civil society, represented in the Quadruple Helix should be encouraged to provide a global picture, maximise the impact of CSAs results and provide an integrated overview of gaps that should be addressed providing evidence-based recommendations for the incoming calls.
LIFT – BOOSTING BIOECONOMY BY MAXIMIZING CSAs RESULTS
To address the above-mentioned challenge, LIFT will maximise the impact of CSA by valorising their outcomes and promoting the collaboration among them, aiming at identifying gaps to be addressed to ensure a stimulating environment boosting the Bio-Based economy.
LIFT’s aims at mapping and analysing the results of work performed by CSAs on Bioeconomy topics funded in the last years by FP7, H2020, BBI JU and Interreg, to provide a global overview of projects’ results, making them readily available, integrated and actionable by industries and policy makers. The results will be integrated under 12 categories:
- Standardisation
- Public awareness raising
- Stakeholder dialogue
- Road mapping and regulatory hurdles identification
- Foresight and market studies
- Biomass availability, supply chains and sustainability
- Analysing bio-based industries in Member States and regions
- Education
- Business models and Business Cases
- Support to uptake of RTD results
- Support to infrastructure development
- Support to research agenda
