Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Introduction to Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

The content of the Cluster covers all three pillars of sustainable development, economic, environmental and social elements, and addresses many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  It includes actions across seven themes that will provide funding opportunities to put human activities on track towards sustainability. 

A key objective is to get biodiversity on a path to recovery and to ensure that biodiversity and ecosystem services are properly valued, respected and restored. These apply across all habitats on land and in water, to help create the foundations for a sustainable future.  

Food systems on land and water from farm to fork, covers food production all the way through the supply chain to consumption. This considers health impacts from diets and the social considerations around consumer behaviour and how that can be used to promote healthy choices. 

The need to maximise the reach of the bioeconomy sectors and the circular economy is essential. This will help us to reduce our environmental impact and improve our resource use and efficiency. This is a fundamental part of the EU (European Union) Green Deal approach to sustainable economic growth.

Having a clean environment and zero pollution is a key component of this cluster. Promoting the reversal and remediation of contaminated sites and reducing nutrient and pollutant losses to land and water will improve environmental quality and improve resource efficiencies. 

Climate action is relevant across land, water and oceans. These actions will help to address the climate change challenges that affect us all. It will promote behaviour change and management practices to assist in the transition to a low carbon economy. There are links to the actions found in Cluster 5 Climate, Energy and Mobility.

Our communities, whether urban, rural or coastal are key to the adoption and effectiveness of any intervention. Engagement and real collaborative working are essential to create more resilient communities to react to the challenges and transitions ahead. 

This cluster is underpinned by actions to support robust evidence and is supported by the use of environmental observations and digital technologies, information gathering and networking and knowledge transfer. The use of evidence-based decision making, through to policy and governance is necessary to embed the R&I into actions to bring about transformative action across the food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment sectors.