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Water plays a central role in how societies mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. A holistic approach considering water, the biosphere, and the anthroposphere is required to provide sustainable agricultural and economic systems that will allow us to decelerate climate change, protect us from extreme events and adapt to the unavoidable at the same time.

Main problems to tackle:

• mitigating water scarcity and drought situations,
• reducing the over usage of water,
• wasting less water with the existing resources

In order to have a wide representation of knowledge, representatives from different sectors, including policy, industry, civil society and research and innovation participate in the process to support in the knowledge sharing and through innovation across the South of Europe.

The foresight work encompassed a comprehensive horizon scanning to identify trends and drivers, weak signals and wild cards. On this basis, five focal areas were proposed:

1. Climate resilient coastlines
2. Clean water for the blue planet
3. Vital aquatic ecosystems
4. Open digital twin of oceans and waters
5. Humans at sea

A real-time delphi survey on further uncertainties was also conducted to incorporate a wider community of experts.

For more information:

Foresight on demand brief

1. It defines a mandate to implement a CE in Europe that includes governmental collaboration and commitment on a national, regional and local scale, with the contribution of all interested parties. Cities play an essential role in tackling sustainability, and the understanding of local contexts is important to develop efficient political interventions, which makes it necessary to approximate the CE from an urban perspective. The implementation of the CE in cities is understood ambiguously and, although various models and frameworks of the CE have been identified, their extension is specific, they are in large part conceptual and they lack transferability to a city context. There exists a lack of consensus regarding what constitutes a “circular city”, and also the need to determine yet further the rationales and the ways forward how to transform cities towards circular models. With the aim of helping to meet this need, our research will precisely explore these issues by conducting research at three different but interconnected areas:
   Field Research. The project involves the need to gather new data from relevant public urban institutions and corporate stakeholders by means of a field survey, meetings and interviews. It is also purposefully designed to connect an extensive network of participants and practitioners, whose involvement would help leverage the impact of the ideas and results of the project.
2. Modelling and Analysis. Upon gathering the data from the field research, our team of researchers will conduct a comprehensive analysis and diagnosis of the inputs, in particular by using complexity analysis methodologies like agent-based simulation, along with network analysis and processing of large databases.
3. Guidelines and Decision Support. Findings of the field research, modelling and analysis are brought to the scrutiny of the representatives of public and private organizations. Such forward-looking and inter-active stakeholder processes lead to the formulation of guidelines that make it possible to tackle complexity of urban governance for sustainability, through transition to a circular city in a programmatic and efficient way.

For more information:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/A-Complexity-approach-modelling-for-decision-support-towards-Circular-Cities-3C-Model

Eco-innovation makes the sustainability of socio-economic growth compatible with that of the natural system. It is a matter of urgency to move towards a circular economy, by profoundly restructuring the economy in the medium and long term. This document proposes an operational definition of the main concepts behind green innovation, as well as other relevant concepts in the framework of a recovery and sustainable development model for the LAC region. It also considers different typologies of instruments and interventions and elaborates recommendations for the implementation of comprehensive policies to promote green innovation in LAC countries. So far, green innovation seems to have performed poorly among LAC countries. In addition to fostering as much as possible local capacities in the LAC region for the production of green innovation, it is also necessary, as an integral part of it, to develop capacities for the absorption and adoption of external technology, which can be transferred from the leading countries of such technologies and practices. Given that there are different barriers to green innovations, it is unlikely that there is a single measure that will mitigate these barriers and therefore a combination of various instruments (policy-mix) will be necessary.

In this research we aim to:

1. Characterise different kinds of EI and identify and describe how different EI features contribute to the CE.
2. Address and identify the barriers that EI faces both in its development and application.
3. Identify those policy features and measures that can be implemented in order to help remove those barriers (or encourage the drivers), and enhance the uptake of EI to enable a transition to the CE.
4. Address the issue of what managers can do to take up EI in their corporate strategy and move forward their circular agenda.

For more information:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Eco-innovations-for-a-Circular-Economy-Characterization-Barriers-Policies-and-Business-Strategies