The proposed project: Initiative of Fostering cross-border knowledge exchange and co-creation on sustainable soil and farm management (Soil-X-Change) will help to connect farmers, actors, policy makers, projects, and initiatives to speed up innovation and promote faster, wider co-creation and transposition of innovative solutions into practice. It will contribute to effective AKIS by intensifying thematic cooperation between researchers, farmers, and other stakeholders in the EU. Soil-X-Change will also contribute to the green transition, smart agriculture, climate-neutrality, and sustainability areas, as well as enhancing and exchanging the knowledge of the main actors. Soil-X-Change, initiated by EIP-AGRI Operational Group practitioners (OGs), reflects the needs of 151 direct partners. It will collect, combine, harmonise, analyse and integrate the results and data product developed by the different EIP-AGRI OGs and the project partners. Soil-X-Change will disseminate and share innovative practices across 9 member countries. Furthermore, the Soil-X-Change project will bring together EIP OGs and key stakeholders working on sustainable soil and farm management to create an EU-wide network, share knowledge, and introduce ready-to-use practices that will enable farmers to make the right decisions related to agricultural production practices. At the end of the project the extended knowledge and innovative ideas of member and non-member OGs will widen the scope of their activities and showcasing their result to an increased number of stakeholders and farmers in an international environment and network across EU countries. Soil-X-Change will use a bottom-up approach (farmers to OGs) and will reinforce and share practical knowledge using the main dissemination channels suitable for farmers and practitioners.

Significant reductions in anthropogenic emissions and increases in CO2 sinks are needed to meet the 1.5 centigrades threshold for global warming set out in the Paris Agreement and reach the climate-neutrality goal of the European Green Deal by 2050. The CO2 sink provided by forests, including old-growth forests, partially offsets the rise in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, providing a large-scale buffer to climate change. Depending on their characteristics and local circumstances, such as management practices or ecosystem services, forests may range from net CO2 sinks to sources. The project 'OPTimising FORest management decisions for a low-carbon, climate resilient future in Europe (OptFor-EU)' will build a Decision Support System (DSS) to provide forest managers and other relevant stakeholders with tailored options for optimising decarbonisation and other Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) across Europe. Based on exploitation of existing data sources, use of novel Essential Forest Mitigation Indicators and relationships between climate drivers, forest responses and ecosystem services, OptFor-EU has five specific objectives: (1) Provide an improved characterisation of the Forest-Climate Nexus and FES; (2) Utilise end-user focused process modelling; (3) Empower forest end-users to make informed decisions to enhance forest resilience and decarbonisation; (4) Provide a novel DSS service; and (5) Bridging different EU strategic priorities, robust science, and stakeholders in the forest and forest-based sectors. Based on a supply-demand approach, the methodology combines an iterative process of data consolidation, modelling, and co-development of solutions alongside forest managers and other practice stakeholders in all European Forest Types. The DSS will be designed and tested at 8 case study areas, to provide a ready-to-use service, near to operational (TRL7) at European level, while a user adoption and up-take plan will maximise the societal and business impact.

The overall aim of ECHO is to engage EU citizens in soil health increasing their knowledge, by generating new data on the health status of EU soils to complement existing soil mapping and soil monitoring in EU Member States, and awareness on the ecological and societal importance of soils. ECHO is based on 3 main principles: 1) to engage citizens motivating them to protect and restore soils; 2) to empower citizens by providing knowledge and an active role in data collection; 3) to enable citizens to directly participate in decision-making on soil issues. ECHO will achieve this through co-creation with target societal groups as a cornerstone of delivering a step change in increased soil literacy in society across Member States. ECHO will develop tailor-made citizen science initiatives across EU Member States taking into account different land-uses, soil types and biogeographical regions as well as stakeholder needs, overcoming the recognised challenges related to age, culture, background and language (28 initiatives with 16500 sites assessed). Our ambition is to actively involve and engage citizens building the capacities and knowledge to promote soil stewardship across EU and foster social change through trust and improved understanding of soil. ECHO will create ECHOREPO, a long-term open access repository, fed with citizen science data to be exploited not only by scientists but also by the general public and end-users. This will leverage and provide added-value to existing data and other relevant soil monitoring initiatives. ECHO´s consortium consists of 16 participants with 9 leading universities and research centres, 5 SMEs, and 2 Foundations. The participants from small companies and foundations, as business and civil society representatives, are complementary to the soil and social sciences experts of academic partners and crucial to achieve the ambitious goals of ECHO.

Roughly 30% of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement (PA) include land-based mitigation measures, but there are still significant uncertainties in their effectiveness to deliver negative emissions. Aside from the expected shortfall of all current NDCs to deliver on the below 2 oC ambition, this uncertainty adds to the risks to human wellbeing as a result of climate change. Land-use based mitigation technologies (LMTs) can play a crucial role in the global efforts to meet the PA goals and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Considering the land-climate-development interface, LANDMARC aims to assess the impacts of LMTs as net sinks for greenhouse gas (GHGs) by applying unique mixed-methods approach. LANDMARC assesses the potential and feasibility of LMTs in the AFOLU sector by: a) quantitatively assessing environmental, social-economic, co-benefits and trade-offs identified through a suite of monitoring tools and model system (including land use, climate and economic models) complemented by; b) qualitative assessments guided by stakeholder engagement. This mixed-method approach allows us to provide more detailed insights on the effectiveness and climate resilience of LMTs at different spatial scales (e.g. scaling up from local/national level to the regional/global level). These tools, services and approaches will contribute to land-based LMT decision support in the private sector and by policy makers. LANDMARC is an interdisciplinary consortium with expertise from ecology, engineering, climate sciences, global carbon cycle, soil sciences, satellite earth observation sciences, agronomy, economics, social sciences, and business. There is a balanced representation of partners from academia, SMEs, and NGOs from the EU, Africa, Asia and the Americas, which ensures a wide coverage of LMTs operating in different contexts (e.g. climates, land-use practices, socio-economic etc.) and spatial scales.

At the present, 60-70% of all soils in Europe are in unhealthy conditions, mainly because of poor land management practices, pollution of soils, intensive agriculture, and the constant effects of climate change. This situation is further aggravated given that 25% of land is at a high or very high risk of suffering desertification in most parts of Europe. MarginUp! proposes a strategy to secure use and return profitability on marginal lands. Its main objective is to introduce climate-resilient and biodiversity-friendly non-food crops for sustainable industrial feedstock in marginalised and low-productivity lands. The project will focus on producing biomass to be used as raw material for the production of bioproducts and biofuels, which in turn, will create a sustainable and circular value chain, increasing the farming system resilience in rural areas. To further enhance the biodiversity beneficial impact, MarginUp! is focusing on understanding which marginal lands are suitable for low ILUC biomass production. The knowledge gathered in this project will be put into practice in 5 different use cases located in 5 different regions across Europe: - Mediterranean Lands (Spain) - Mine Lands (Greece) - Boreal Lands (Sweden) - Wetlands (Germany) - Central Europe (Hungary) Moreover, international cooperation has been considered and examination and identification of marginal lands will extend to non-European countries such as Argentina and South Africa. To ensure the success of the project, MarginUp! will have a replication network to address the needs and requirements of relevant stakeholders, including, policymakers, land managers, farmers, the bio-based industry, environmental authorities, the academia and the civil society. MarginUp! is directly contributing to European policies such as the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy action plan and the Bioeconomy and Biodiversity strategies.