New Strategic Research Agenda and election of Claire Chenu

21.02.2016

FACCE-JPI releases revised Strategic Research Agenda and Implementation Plan 2016-2018, and appoints Claire Chenu to the Scientific Advisory Board.

“Let’s be clear: the challenges of food security, climate change, and depletion of resources are so important that they cannot be addressed at the national level alone. Even if the work in different countries gives rise to numerous advances, it is imperative to establish a genuine European coordination around a common vision and shared objectives and instruments”, says FACCE-JPI Governing Board Chair Niels Gøtke.

Strategic Research Agenda (SRA)

The updated SRA sets out policy-relevant research priorities on agriculture, food security and climate change in Europe and structures current and future actions around five major scientific themes. The SRA incorporates new knowledge and emerging European and global issues, and takes into account the international agendas on Sustainable Development Goals (Rio 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) and COP 21 (2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris). The five core themes are:

Sustainable food security under climate change,
Environmentally sustainable intensification of agricultural systems,
Developing synergies and reducing trade-offs between food supply, biodiversity and ecosystem services,
Adaptation to climate change,
Mitigation of climate change.

Implementation plan 2016–2018

Solutions, methods and tools developed in and for Europe can also be relevant at a global scale. In the SRA, FACCE – JPI presents the strategic core themes to better align current and future research programmes. With the Implementation Plan 2016 – 2018, FACCE – JPI sets prioritises to implement actions with regard to the core themes.

Election of Claire Chenu to the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)

Claire Chenu, Professor of soil sciences at AgroParisTech and Member of the Steering Committee of NRP 68, is elected member of the SAB of FACCE – JPI. She is a reknowned expert in soil sciences with 217 scientific publications. Her research focuses on the dynamic, the stabilization processes, roles and interactions of soil organic matter. Furthermore, Claire Chenu is president of the scientific council of GESSOL (Fonctions environnementales et GEStion du patrimoine SOL), a research programme set up by the French Ministry for Ecology. With this scientific advisory portfolio, she will be a key person for the alignment of national research activities in the field of soil science.