AEIDL experts spend a significant amount of time engaging stakeholders in projects, but we also undertake advocacy for better policies to support local development across Europe.
On 19th and 20th June, our AEIDL expert Carla Lostrangio attended the GRANULAR Executive Board and Living Lab facilitators meeting in Ede (The Netherlands) to discuss the upcoming steps of the project. The meeting focused on the role and needs of 7 GRANULAR Living Labs and the Rural Compass. The Rural Compass aims to become an analytical tool aimed at characterising rural areas and advising rural policy development, from policy design to implementation. Wageningen University is developing a Prototype of the Rural Compass, that will be then tested in targeted rural territories and with respect to specific rural policies.
Carla also attended the 3rd European Rural Geographies Conference held in Groningen where she presented MOVING briefing on nature protected sites prepared by Blanca Casares. This is an issue of great importance, particularly in view of the difficulties in approving the EU Nature Restoration Law. AEIDL will precisely organise a dedicated online MOVING conference on nature protected sites next October on this issue. Furthermore, she also presented a paper on the” Smartness: tailoring the concept to low populated areas, islands, cross-border and mountain regions” at the XXIXth European Society for Rural Sociology Congress.
However, in addition to carrying out our advocacy through external events or special meetings we organise on our own such as the European Local Innovation Forum, the majority of our engagement happens through the projects we are partners on. A recent example was our organisation of the TOOLS4CAP Info Session that gathered well over a hundred of experts and government officials in charge of implementing the new CAP Strategic Plans which launched last January and will shape the investments in farming and rural areas until 2027. You can find the highlights report to get an idea of how CAP is going.
Lastly, the H2020 DESIRA project, in which AEIDL is a key partner, has successfully concluded with remarkable achievements. DESIRA’s impact has been substantial, creating a vibrant community of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers committed to advancing the sustainable digitalization of rural areas. AEIDL has played a fundamental role in the development of DESIRA. Their contributions encompassed capitalization and diffusion of the project’s results, enabling the widespread dissemination of knowledge and insights. Furthermore, AEIDL took charge of organising the highly successful DESIRA Final Conference, which served as a platform for sharing and celebrating the project’s achievements. You can see some of these below.
As we bid farewell to DESIRA, we welcome the Horizon Europe project CODECS, which is set to continue working towards sustainable digitalization in agriculture and rural areas. CODECS will capitalise on the wealth of knowledge garnered by DESIRA and take the baton to lead in the coming years. Through our colleague Leticia Abarca, AEIDL, as a key player in CODECS, will persist in its commitment to shaping better policies, procedures, and policy communication for a smarter, greener, and healthier EU for all.
In addition to subscribing to the AEIDL Newsletter or to the European Local Innovation Forum (ELIF) you can also subscribe to the brand new newsleters for these projects by clicking here for CODECS, TOOLS4CAP and GRANULAR