LifeWatch ERIC in IKRI Launch

Click here to watch a short explanatory video on IKRI.

The UNGA76 Science Summit is in full swing, and LifeWatch ERIC has already played an active part in several sessions, looking forward to the LifeWatch ERIC-convened session on SDGs 14 and 15 on 1 October 2021. On 23 September, LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Dr Juan Miguel González-Aranda, alongside Prof Vladislav Popov and Ms Karina Angelieva from LifeWatch Bulgaria, took part in an important session on the launch of the Indigenous Knowledge Research Infrastructure (IKRI), which approximately 140 people attended.

The UNFSS (UN Food Systems Summit) recommended five ongoing Action Areas where the UN will place a particular focus and take increased responsibility to link the local to the global and support implementation at country level to maximise impact on the 2030 Agenda.* These Action Areas will help to organise, guide, and direct the wealth of initiatives emerging from the Summit process to achieve the SDGs. Action area 5: “Support the Means of Implementation” covers the following: Finance; Governance; Science and Knowledge (Indigenous Food Systems); Innovation, Technology, & Data, Capacity; and Human Rights, and beyond).

The “Global Research Initiative and Knowledge Repository to integrate Indigenous Knowledge into Food Systems” was developed as part of the UN Food Systems Summit process, with the collective efforts of CANEUS, together with The Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC), United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), The Africa-Europe Science and Innovation Platform (AERAP) and LifeWatch ERIC. It will contribute to action area 5: “Support Means of Implementation”, and was launched at the UN FSS Summit.

This Global research initiative aims to develop digital infrastructure to support more comprehensive R&D collaboration between the UN and the EU, AU, and other regions, creating partnerships and sustained access to data and information sources globally and lessening the regulatory burden associated with access to and use of public data. The initiative will function as a digital infrastructure known as IKRI, based on the EU Strategy Forum for Research infrastructures ESFRI. It will have a component of “Technology-based Repository” that utilises frontier Technologies (Earth observation and geospatial intelligence with 4th Industrial Revolution Technologies) for the development of a portal that captures, processes, analyses and presents Indigenous knowledge through multiple sources.

The IKRI is hoped to increase the level and range of partners who can bring Indigenous knowledge to collaborative research supported by the EU Horizon Europe Programme and other research programmes implemented at state level and committed to supporting the SDGs. It would further leverage the EU Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Programme, known as the Global Europe Programme, to support Indigenous knowledge, ensuring that developing nations are considered within the context of enabling global policies and related regulations to ensure that the global regulatory environment does not become a barrier to knowledge exchange, but rather supports access to and use of patent data, knowledge and know-how.

*(1) Nourish All People, (2) Boost Nature-based Solutions, (3) Advance Equitable Livelihoods, Decent Work & Empowered Communities, (4) Build Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks and Stresses, and (5) Support Means of Implementation.

Welcome, LifeWatch Bulgaria!

LifeWatch Bulgaria

LifeWatch ERIC is delighted to announce that the 1 January 2022 will signal the expansion of the LifeWatch ERIC community, with the establishment of LifeWatch Bulgaria. On 8 July 2021, the General Assembly unanimously approved the application of Bulgaria to become the eighth full member of LifeWatch ERIC.

LifeWatch Bulgaria has already planned several forms of in-kind contribution to the LifeWatch Infrastructure, such as carrying out complex studies into the plant health of cultivated species in the context of sustainable agroecosystems. Such research will be carried out through its nominated partner organisation PlantHealth, the Centre for Diagnostics and Technologies in Plant Health. It is thought that Bulgaria’s membership of LifeWatch ERIC will be mutually beneficial, contributing to the advancement of European research into biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch ERIC Chief Executive Officer, made the following statement:

“The unanimous admission of Bulgaria to the LifeWatch ERIC Infrastructure by the General Assembly is testament to our enthusiasm about the expansion. Mr Krasimir Valchev, Bulgarian Minister for Education and Science, has expressed his confidence that Bulgaria shares common values and objectives with LifeWatch ERIC, and having read the Bulgarian Official Letter of Interest elaborating goals and plans for collaboration, the General Assembly was only too happy to agree. We have no doubt that Bulgaria will support and facilitate the accomplishment of LifeWatch ERIC mission, along with the activities and governance of the Consortium, and we look forward with anticipation to the activation of its membership in 2022.”

Countries wishing to join LifeWatch ERIC are welcome to consult our FAQ. Further questions and enquiries may be directed to statutoryseat[@]lifewatch.eu.

The admission of members that are EU Member States is governed by the LifeWatch ERIC Statutes Art. 3 (Membership and representing entity), 4 (Membership and representing entity) and 8 (3) (General Assembly) with no special requirement in terms of voting majority.

New collaborations with Bulgaria and South Africa

As part of LifeWatch ERIC’s highly successful involvement in Transfiere 2021 in Málaga on Thursday 15 April 15 2021, two international bilateral meetings were chaired by Chief Technology Officer and Director of the Common Facility in Spain, Juan Miguel González-Aranda. 

The first involved the Deputy Minister of Education and Science from the Government of Bulgaria, Karina Angelieva, while the second was a meeting with the Deputy Director General of International Cooperation and Resources of the government of South Africa, Daan du Toit, accompanied by Vinny Pillay, Senior Science & Technology Representative to the EU, from the South African Department of Science & Innovation. 

Both of these important meetings counted on the involvement of representatives from the Region of Andalusia Government-Junta de Andalusia, first among whom was the Director General for Research and Knowledge Transfer of the Junta de Andalucía, Teresa Serrano Gotarredona.

The discussions were broad-ranging and positive, looking at future collaboration projects between the countries involved. Of particular interest for Bulgaria were relationships around Agroecology and the Marine domain; whereas joint actions aimed at EU-African Union cooperation on the Green Deal and Energy Transition were explored with South Africa.

LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative

Non-indigenous and Invasive species (NIS) are considered a major threat to biodiversity around the globe: they can impact ecosystems in many ways by outcompeting or predating on native species. Who has not heard of the Burmese pythons in Florida that eat alligators? The negative impact of imported rats and cats that have decimated island fauna populations? However, the long-term impacts of NIS on ecosystem integrity are poorly explored, and policy-makers are often left without sufficient information to make wise management decisions.

In the belief that the first steps in tackling biodiversity loss must be to improve our knowledge by developing better inter-disciplinary paradigms, LifeWatch ERIC is launching an exciting new Internal Joint Initiative (IJI), involving the scientific communities of National Nodes and other European Research Infrastructures, that will thoroughly describe the issues involved in ecosystem and habitat type vulnerability, and produce future scenarios under changing vectors to help decision-makers combat the impacts of climate change. 

The LifeWatch ERIC Internal Joint Initiative will combine data, semantic resources, data management services, and data analysis and modelling from its seven member countries – Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain – to bring together national assets on a scale never attempted before. This integration of Common Facilities and National Nodes will provide the comprehensive and synthetic knowledge so much needed by institutions and administrators.

By deploying and publishing on the LifeWatch ERIC web portal the federated resources and e-Tools and e-Resources, the Internal Joint Initiative will also define the requirements and architecture of the LifeWatch ERIC virtual research environments, and provide a clear demonstration of the Infrastructure’s added value for researchers in addressing specific biodiversity and ecosystem management issues. 

Non-indigenous and Invasive Species are a global problem. They are distributed among most plant and animal taxa, and present a number of key issues that remain challenging for both researchers and policy-makers. The knowledge produced by the Internal Joint Initiative will thus be of global significance. It is to be hoped that this demonstration case will be seen to have scientific and socio-economic implications for many different fields of investigation over the coming decades.