WEFE4MED

WEFE4MED: Towards a Mediterranean WEFE Nexus (Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems) Community of Practice

WEFE4MED is a 48-months project which started on the 1st of October 2022 financed by the PRIMA programme (supported and funded under Horizon 2020, the EU’s Programme for Research and Innovation) with a budget of almost €2 million, relying on a consortium of 12 partners from 10 European countries.

Aim of the project is to foster the adoption of a Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems Nexus approach in the Mediterranean, through a Nexus Community of Practice (NCoP) to confront the climatic and environmental challenges facing societies and agro-ecological systems.

About

Climate change and growing populations are placing additional pressure on the availability of food, energy and water in the Mediterranean, accompanied by an increased environmental footprint. The Water, Energy, Food, Ecosystems Nexus (Nexus) approach is key to ensuring resilient, circular, and green economies and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and Nexus demonstrators are already showing its transformative potential for the Region. However, there is a long way ahead before the Nexus approach is mainstreamed and applied at large in policies and practices. To ramp up uptake, a robust mechanism is needed to support mobilization of a range of stakeholders across countries, sharing their expectations, experiences, and knowledge, and providing evidence of benefits to policy makers, investors, businesses, practitioners and society at large.

Objective

The WEFE4MED Community of Practice will gather together practitioners, scientists, policymakers, local authorities, civil society, the media, entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors to provide convincing practical and scientific evidence of the Nexus benefits as a basis for decision-making in integrated natural resources management. It will convene, share knowledge and build capacities by deploying best practices and science-based policies and innovative solutions inspired by demonstration sites, showcasing the benefits of integrated natural resource management for sustainable, climate-resilient development in the Mediterranean.

 Outcome

WEFE4MED will interface science, policy, practice representatives around the WEFE Nexus demonstration cases as socio-innovation experiments in the Mediterranean Region with the aim to share, through a structured participatory process, multi-disciplinary and transversal scientific solutions. These will constitute the nucleus of “Living Labs”, showcasing and promoting the identified Mediterranean best practices and how to engage the wider society using innovation approaches.

WEFE4MED will establish an open digital Nexus Knowledge Hub that will foster long-lasting cooperation between actors and demonstrator projects to replicate and upscale them in other countries; and will support mutual learning among knowledge holders and promote external funding opportunities. The NCoP Knowledge Hub will gather available knowledge and make available information from a range of stakeholders across Nexus sectors. It will reach out and link with other Nexus platforms and websites in the Mediterranean region.

 Participants

  • The Cyprus Institute (CYI)
  • Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development (MIO-ECSDE)
  • Berytech Foundation (BT)
  • European Sustainable Energy Innovation Alliance (ESEIA)
  • The Energy and Water Agency (EWA)
  • Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI)
  • MED CITIES (MC)
  • Arab Water Council (AWC)
  • Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR)
  • Egyptian Center for Innovation and Technology Development (ECITD)
  • Global Water Partnership Organisation (GWPO)
  • International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)

The Kick-off meeting, hosted by the lead partner of the project (The Cyprus Institute) took place on the last 26th and 27th of October 2022 in Nicosia.

 For more information visit here

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