The project

WP 1 Project management (Wageningen University)

The overall objective of WP1 wa two-fold: 1) to ensure proper activity management of the project, 2) to streamline any administrative, financial, legal and IP (Intellectual Property) issues in order to enable RTD partners to focus on their research activities. Specific sub-objectives are:

• Activity management to facilitate smooth operation of the project objectives by supporting the coordinator, WP leaders and other partners, and compiling the periodic activity reports
• To handle all the financial, administrative and legal matters of the consortium
• Address gender equality issues in the project
• To ensure good communication within the project, and to parties outside the consortium
• To organize plenary project meetings and to facilitate the organization of Scientific Board meeting

WP 2 Providing the base for RECARE regarding data collection and methods (Bioforsk, the Norwegian Institute   for Agricultural and   Environmental Research)

• To achieve an improved overview of existing information on soil degradation at the European scale
• To assess the influence of climate and human activities upon regulating key soil properties, soil functions and ecosystem services
• To provide a base for RECARE’s data collection and methods in the Case Study sites

WP 3 State of degradation and conservation in the RECARE Case Study sites (Technical University of Crete)

• Assembling existing data and information on each of the RECARE Case Study sites, including spatial information, as needed by other WPs
• Inventory of existing soil degradation assessment methodologies addressing individual soil threats, and selection of the best and most applicable ones for use in RECARE Case Study sites
• Development of a harmonized methodology to determine the state of degradation and conservation, that is universally applicable and covering all soil threats
• Determining the extent and severity of soil degradation and conservation using the newly developed harmonized methodology
• Preparation of degradation and conservation maps for each Case Study area

WP 4 Stakeholder participation and valuation (Centre for Development and   Environment  CDE, University of Bern)

The main objective of WP4 was to ensure that the trans-disciplinary approach of RECARE was fully implemented and that stakeholders (including, land managers, food producers, developers, industry, regulators, advisory services, authorities and experts) were actively involved throughout the project. This includes the development and application of a methodology in order to connect stakeholders to the project, to enable stakeholder learning, and valuation of ecosystem services resulting from degradation and from prevention, remediation and restoration measures, at the local as well as at the (sub-) national level.  More information about the RECARE Stakeholder participatory approach is available HERE.
 

WP 5 Selection of promising prevention, remediation and restoration measures (ISRIC World Soil Information)

• Identify and select promising prevention, remediation and restoration measures to combat degradation, adapted to the local context.
   

WP 6 Testing and demonstration of prevention, remediation and restoration measures (UAVR, University of Aveiro, Portugal)

• Defining and implementing a harmonized monitoring strategy for assessing effectiveness of measures for the full range of soil threats addressed by RECARE, with regard to the state of degradation, as well as effects upon soil functioning and ecosystem services
• Quantifying the effectiveness of the selected and implemented soil protection and/or restoration measures, through comparison with untreated and unthreatened conditions
• Identifying the key factors and processes explaining the effectiveness of the tested measures, as the basis for up-scaling in WP8
• Demonstrating the viability of measures for private and public stakeholders

WP 7 Costs, benefits and adoption of prevention, remediation and restoration measures (University of Leeds)

• Define an appropriate multi-methods approach to assess costs and benefits at the implementation level and entire Case Study level, taking into account the impacts of the measures on ecosystem functions and services
• Implement the approach for each Case Study with attention to scale, timing and dosage
• Explore Case Study level preferences for remediation options and evaluation 

WP 8 Applicability and effects of measures at the European level (Research Institute for Knowlegde Systems B.V. - RIKS)

• Integrate the results obtained by WPs 3-7 in the different Case Studies in order to draw general conclusions for each soil threat and ways to effectively prevent or remediate impacts of such threats
• Determine to what extent Case Studies contributed to filling knowledge gaps at the European scale
• Develop and apply a quantitative, spatially explicit model to assess the impact of prevention and remediation measures for different soil threats at the European level

WP 9 Policy analysis and recommendations (Ecologic Institute)

• Carry out an integrated impact assessment of the relevant EU and national policies and strategies addressing (directly or indirectly) soil threats to evaluate their impact on soil protection and to identify gaps and contradictions between these policies
• Develop policy recommendations for improving policy efforts, streamlining policy coherence and integration, and improving institutional coordination
• Promoting implementation of succesfull measures at EU scale

WP 10 Data use, management, and hosting (Joint Research Centre of the   European Commission)

• Assist RECARE partners to find and access relevant data maintained by partner 13 (JRC), and to use it in GIS and modelling analyses
• Develop a data infrastructure for the RECARE project
• Develop software interface for importing/exporting data for the project partners
• Ensure the proper data management of the project, make the data publicly accessible and maintain the infrastructure beyond the lifetime of the project

WP 11 Dissemination and communication (University of Gloucestershire, UK)

• Develop an advanced and easy accessible RECARE Dissemination and Communication Hub
• Develop a Dissemination and Communication Strategy based on specified goals and objectives to raise the visibility of the project and to ensure project results reach the intended target audience
• Develop a suite of dissemination products from the research outputs suited to different categories of stakeholders at Case Study, national and European levels

BACKGROUND

The European Commission has issued a Gender Equality Policy, in order to promote gender equality into all its policies covering all European Union countries. This Policy has been laid down in the 'Strategy for equality between women and men' for the period 2010-2015. 

The European policy and its background are described on the Gender Policy website of the EU, the document describing this strategy can be downloaded HERE. Recent publications on gender equality (such as Gender Equality Policies in Public Research and Vademecum on Gender Equality in Horizon2020 can be downloaded HERE.
 

GENDER EQUALITY IN EUROPEAN RESEARCH PROGRAMS

Since 2012, gender equality is one of the key priorities of a “Reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth” (ERA). To this end, Member States are invited to remove barriers to the recruitment, retention and career progression of female researchers, address gender balance in decision making and strengthen the gender dimension in research programmes.

 
The European Commission encourages Member States to create the appropriate legal and policy environment to incentivise institutional changes. This should aim to correct gender imbalances in careers and in decision making, and to strengthen the gender dimension in research programmes.
 

GENDER EQUALITY IN THE RECARE PROJECT

Encouraged by the European Union inititives, the RECARE project promoted Gender Equality by actively stimulating equal rights and opportunities within the project. We encouraged project partners to employ both men and women within research where possible, and actively monitored progress in this field. For this work, the Recare project appointed Heleen Claringbould from COREPAGE. Heleen is a specialist in the field of Gender Issues. Each reporting period a Gender Balance survey was conducted within the project, and a Gender Balance Report written and submitted to the EU. These reports can be downloaded from the table below.
 

SUMMARY OF THE 2015 REPORT

This is the reflection of the first gender reporting period of the RECARE EU project from the 7th Framework program. With the RECARE project the consortium wants to develop and validate prevention, remediation and restoration measures to restore soil functions and ecosystem services to promote sustainable land management and land care "....to stimulate renewed care for European soils!"

The gender dimension here is to understand the differences in positions, roles and approaches of men and women and prevent biases in these gendered roles and positions when changing the approaches towards soil threats into sustainable land use.

To secure this gender equality goal in the project three key issues are used: awareness raising, mobilization and data gathering. These issues are looked after within the research teams as well as among the stakeholders in the study sites.

Concerning the mobilization it appears that the amount of men and women in the research teams were well balanced, the positions however are out of balance because there are more women among the early researchers and more men among the experienced researchers and higher positions.

The stakeholders were identified by the topic of their involvement (agriculture, research, and water management etcetera), their role (land owner, community leader, retailer of products etc.), aim and sector (public/private) that relate them to the researched soil threat. Gender equality was mentioned in the preparation but not as a goal in itself. The results on the stakeholder participation in the first workshop show that some more effort can be made in the mobilization of women as well as men because they were out of balance. The data gathering among the stakeholders in the evaluation of the first workshop gave some interesting information. They were asked about their roles, their valuation of the soil ecosystem services (ESS), their approach of sustainable land management (SLM) and the impact on their roles when the land management changes. Women specifically reminded us of the health of future generations with sustainable soil management where men specifically mentioned terminology like efficiency related to crop production, the combination of these interpretations give a broad spectrum of the stakeholders valuation of the local soil and its possibilities.

The approach for the following project periods was to continue with the awareness of the gender balance in mobilization of project staff and stakeholders and gather more gender disaggregated data on this gendered ESS/SLM perspective, on the roles and impact of changes in land management approaches mainly based on the information given by the project partners and the involved stakeholders and to use this information in communication and reporting on soil care.

This project received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 603498.

Key project facts

Project title:           Preventing and Remediating degradation of soils in Europe through Land Care.
Instrument:            ENV.2013.6.2-4
EU contract:          603498
Total cost:             10.904.457,00 Euro
EC Contribution:   8.539.524,00 Euro
Duration:               5 years
Start date:             01 Nov 2013
End date:              31 Oct 2018
Consortium:          27 European partners
Project Coord.:     Wageningen University, ALTERRA, NL.
EU info:                http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/110887_en.html

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