Mountains in Horizon 2020 agenda
26.05.2015
Lobbying for mountain research with the European funding agencies is one of the current projects of the CH-AT coordination office in Bern. In two meetings in Vienna and Bern, the core group of a “Mountain Research Advocacy Network” developed an ambitious plan for 2015.
Austria and Switzerland as mountainous countries are spearheading the effort to ensure that mountain research topics have a more prominent role in future funding calls. One of the strategic objectives of the Swiss-Austrian Alliance for Mountain Research is to “Secure and develop the role of European research towards a sustainable development of mountain regions in an international context.” If we are successful, this would mean that mountains be recognized for their important role in the European economy and generally for the European lowlands.
This is a very big objective for a very small office! Thus, in 2014, we called on the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) Europe network, which represents nearly 2 000 mountain researchers from all European countries, for help tackling this challenge. Many people answered the call and expressed interest in lobbying for mountain research within the EU. These scientists, who are well established within their research communities and have good contacts to the Horizon2020 contact points in their countries, form the informal “Mountain Research Advocacy Network”. The active core group as of April 2015 consists of Bulent Acma (TK), Bernat Claramunt (ES), Thomas Dax (AT), Igor Jelen (IT), Robert Kanka (SK), Gaël Le Roux (F), Martin Price (UK), Thomas Scheurer (CH), and Rolf Weingartner (CH).
This group set to work in April 2015 and started to jointly write a strategic document, highlighting how mountain research can contribute to solving the societal challenges as defined in Horizon 2020. An initial meeting took place on 15 April in Vienna; two weeks later, the second half of the core group met in Bern.
The outcome of these two meetings is an ambitious plan:
A strategic paper with the tentative title “Mountains for Europe’s Future” should be ready by early 2016. This will be presented at the Roundtable “Key research themes for European mountains” at the “Mountains of our Future Earth Conference” at Perth in October 2015, and then fed into the Horizon 2020 consultation process to influence the 2018-2019 work programmes.
One of the many flip-charts from the Bern meeting: descriptive slogans for each of the 7 societal challenges as defined in Horizon 2020 make the link to potential mountain research topics.
If you are interested in supporting this effort, please contact Claudia Drexler drexler [at] giub.unibe.ch.
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Photo and news by Mountain Research Initiative (MRI).
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