Cultural heritage, origin products and biodiversity in rural areas are often underutilized or exploited according to short-term logics. SUS-TER addresses the need of developing specific knowledge, skills and abilities for the elaboration and support of inclusive and sustainable territorial valorization of these local resources. SUS-TER will develop a new interdisciplinary profile of “Territorial Enhancer” capable to activate and facilitate these processes of sustainable valorisation. He/she will be able to design and implement: - local forms of interaction between resources, society and local economy, applying a territorial development paradigm - local systems of governance of biocultural rural territories and associated knowledge and know-how- territorial marketing plans, applying methodologies that allow local enterprises to participate in markets competitively, sustainably and inclusively.This general aim will be pursued by means of the design, elaboration and testing delivering of an innovative course, based on the concepts of modularity, integration of theoretical and practical knowledge, blending of different learning methods, recognition within existing HEI curricula. Territorial laboratories will play a key role in the methodology, allowing for the integration of knowledge and practice by means of a learning space linking teachers, producers, entrepreneurs and public authorities. The course will be delivered at international level and within each university. It will be recognized by the Universities according to their institutional rules, as such or as part of existing curricula. The course and teaching materials will be in Spanish. Preliminarily, a specific training for academic staff will be carried out.SUS-TER will impact students and Universities, but also SMEs, NGOs, collective organizations, international, national and local development agencies, allowing for inclusive and sustainable processes of valorization of rural heritage.

Climate Labs seeks to strengthen the applied research and innovation capacities of ten partner universities from Mexico, Brazil and Colombia through the design and implementation of Social Innovation Labs for mitigation and adaptation to Climate Change. In a network with Universities from Spain, France, and Italy, plus Ashoka as a non-academic expert partner, the project seeks to build interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder labs that will institutionalize the applied research and innovation for climate change in the territories the partners are inserted. In a term of three years, the project expects to train scholars, students and staff members in Latin America, who will form changemaker leader teams, design and implement labs according to the needs, strengths, challenges and characteristics of the institutions and territories they serve. In this period, each university will also implement a pilot project, get connected with international relevant networks as well as other national institutions, build the physical and virtual infrastructure of the lab, and develop strategies for the sustainability and scalability of the project. The project seeks, ultimately, to build strong and connected areas of innovation and applied research within universities impacting in the overall capacities and strategies of the partner countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.