Exploring Climate and Environmental Transition in Italy: Parma, Piacenza & Ferrara

Delve into the heart of Italy's tomato processing hub, where the Emilia-Romagna region hosts three provinces renowned for their pivotal role in the tomato supply chain. Italy ranks as the third-largest producer of tomatoes for processing globally, with a significant portion of this production emanating from Parma, Piacenza, and Ferrara.

Delve into the heart of Italy’s tomato processing hub, where the Emilia-Romagna region hosts three provinces renowned for their pivotal role in the tomato supply chain. Italy ranks as the third-largest producer of tomatoes for processing globally, with a significant portion of this production emanating from Parma, Piacenza, and Ferrara.

Transition Focus: Climate and Environmental Challenges

The pressing issue of water management takes center stage amidst the climate and environmental transition. Intensive agricultural activities and recurring droughts amplify the demand for water, posing a threat to the vital tomato ripening cycle. As global warming reshapes natural water patterns, the region grapples with the adverse impacts, from soil erosion to hydrogeological instability.

Living Lab Challenge

In response to these challenges, the Living Lab initiative tackles the urgency of climate change, particularly focusing on water availability and management for irrigation. With water scarcity becoming increasingly prevalent, innovative solutions are imperative to ensure sustainable agricultural practices.

Rationale

Effective water management demands comprehensive governance structures and integrated monitoring systems. Despite existing weather stations and data sources, a cohesive approach to data analysis and model development is crucial for informed decision-making and resource allocation.

Policy Relevance

The water management challenge resonates beyond the agricultural sector, necessitating holistic solutions to meet the diverse needs of stakeholders. Local institutions and the Interbranch Organization (IBO) spearhead policy initiatives to address water scarcity and ensure rational development.

Research Questions

Key inquiries revolve around the development of an integrated monitoring system for water availability and needs, as well as strategies to enhance local water management effectiveness. Balancing the demands of various stakeholders remains paramount in shaping sustainable policies.

Emerging Data Needs

Robust data collection and analysis are essential for modeling water demand and distribution, especially during dry seasons. Coordinated efforts are required to harness existing data and fill knowledge gaps to mitigate the impacts of climate change effectively.

In the pursuit of sustainable agricultural practices, Italy’s Parma, Piacenza, and Ferrara regions stand at the forefront of climate adaptation and environmental stewardship. Join us as we navigate the challenges and opportunities on the path to a resilient future.

The 14 RUSTIK Living Labs actors meet in Barcelona to foster knowledge exchange

 

The Pilot Region Kick-off was held in February 2023, and it was RUSTIK’s first in-person knowledge exchange, training, and networking event for partners from the 14 Pilot Regions. The event took place over two days in Barcelona and Osona in Catalonia.

During the Pilot Region Kick-off event, attendees had the opportunity to increase their understanding of the RUSTIK project and interact with the project coordinators. They also delved into how the Pilot Regions could add value to the initiative and gained indispensable knowledge for implementing RUSTIK’s approaches. It was also the first opportunity for exchanging ideas and insights with partners from 14 distinct rural regions across ten states.

During the first day of the meeting, the RUSTIK project was introduced, and the attendees learned about the key concepts that will play a key role throughout the project’s duration and began exploring how these concepts could be put into practice in their respective pilot regions. On the second day, the focus shifted from ideas to action. The attendees comprehended what to anticipate and accomplish as they started to put into action a RUSTIK Living Lab in their pilot regions.

The interactive workshops enabled the attendees to have a direct conversation with the leads in charge of each of the upcoming tasks in the Living Lab. They had the chance to ask questions and provide feedback about the topics covered, which included doing background research on their respective pilot regions led by Franco Mantino (CREA), identifying existing data and data needs led by Andreu Ulied (MCRIT), setting up and assessing their Living Lab led by Janet Dwyer (CCRI), and creating a policy panorama for their pilot region led by Petri Kahila and Juha Halme (UEF).

Our hosts in Catalonia

The hosts for the event were MCRIT and the Ersilia Foundation. On the first day, we visited Sant Miquel de Balenyà, one of RUSTIK’s 14 pilot regions. The town had been established after a train station was built in the area in 1875, and it now has 1,353 residents. The nearby Parc Natural de Montseny is a UNESCO biosphere reserve. The wider region, Osona (with a population of 165,229), is renowned for its sausages and has a ratio of over six pigs per person.

RUSTIK will run 14 Living Labs to foster sustainability transitions in rural communities

RUSTIK (Rural Sustainability Transitions through Integration of Knowledge for improved policy processes) is a four-year transdisciplinary research project. The project aims to enable rural communities’ actors and policymakers to design better strategies, initiatives and policies fostering sustainability transitions of rural areas.

The project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme, envisages an analysis of current adaption requirements and the support of effective rural policy-making processes for a better understanding of the different rural functionalities and characteristics as well as the potentials and challenges of rural areas. Environment, climate-energy, socio-economic and digital will be the key transition pathways studied in the project.

Living Labs in 14 European Pilot Regions in 10 European countries will be the central element to generate new insights into rural diversity and societal transformations. RUSTIK’s Living Labs will work on the identification of new data, methods of data collection, combined with current data sources to set up relevant indicators. The project will also focus on data integration and dissemination, to make information and analysis accessible and valuable for actors and policymakers; and to improve rural impact assessment. The final goal is to enhance policy strategies and governance structures. To do so, 3 sequential phases: situational review, data experimentation, and policy learning are envisaged.

This week the academic partners of the project got together for the kick-off meeting organised in Frankfurt by the project coordinator, the Institute for Rural Development Research (IfLS).

A multidisciplinary consortium
The consortium involves 30 partner organisations. Eight universities and four research institutes are providing scientific expertise within the fields of rural development, spatial planning and reporting, policy process, climate change and sustainability; two knowledge-based SMEs contribute to this with ready-to-apply technologies and approaches; and two NGOs act as intermediaries between university resp. SMEs.

Local and regional embedded partners ensure a practice-oriented implementation of the project. This comprises partners from five local or regional public administration, two local action groups (LAGs), three business associations and three regional development agencies.

Two European umbrella organisation representing rural mountainous stakeholders and regions, Euromontana,, and the European LEADER association for rural development, ELARD, are key multipliers towards other European regions and particularly support the dissemination towards the European Union.

The consortium efforts will contribute to enhancing existing European policy tools and approaches, most of all to support the European Green Deal, the European Digital Strategy, the European Pillar of Social Rights and the EU Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas of the European Union, the EU Cohesion policy, the common agricultural policy, and, in particular, the European agricultural guarantee fund (EAGF).

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