This is the first meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board for the EU Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change. This initiative involves twenty European countries overall and is jointly led by France, through its National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and the UK, through the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). It will bring together researchers, improve the effectiveness of national funding totalling over €1bn annually, share existing research results and coordinate future work to avoid duplication and maximise value for money. The European Commission will also contribute about €2mn.
European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn says: ‘Food security is a stark matter of life and death and without it there is no other kind of security. Quite rightly, billions of euro are being invested by public and private sector in tackling this huge challenge. But no one Member State can succeed on its own. We can only get full value for public research funds by working together. This Joint Programming Initiative will help replace fragmentation and duplication with coherence and coordination and will therefore be a major contribution to the Europe 2020 Strategy.’
Joint Programming aims at bringing together EU Member States in close cooperation to define, develop and implement common strategic research agendas in the fields that matter most to Europe’s quality of life and prosperity. Today, less than 15% of public civil research is coordinated at the European level. Only about 5% of public research funding is channelled through the EU budget, but, according to the Commission, it is committed to doing everything it can to contribute to improving coordination of the other 95%.
The JPI on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change aims at targeting joint research to achieve a shared vision: to secure a safe and sustainable food supply, whilst reducing the impact of agriculture on climate change. As well as the French and British coordinators (see above), it involves Austria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.
The meeting in Paris at INRA headquarters gathers 12 top scientists including two from the US and aims to fix the scientific research agenda of the JPI by the end of the year. The Scientific Advisory Board will also formally elect its Chair for the next two years.
JPIs also provide Europe’s partners with ‘a single voice’ to which they can talk.
