Collaborative innovation for improving resilience to climate change

This month of May has started the project CONCAT LL: Collaborative mONitoring and Climate AdapTation: Living Lab to bury the resilience of agriculture in Catalonia.

On 22-23 April, the first meeting was held in Greece with the components of the 10 other living labs that will be funded by Eco-Ready, a European project on food safety.

IRTA is coordinating the CONCAT LL project, with the participation of the consultancy firm Naked Innovations and the FCAC (Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of Catalonia). Within the framework of CONCAT LL, we will set up a living lab to assess the effects of climate change: an open, user-centred, territorial innovation ecosystem that integrates innovation from concurrent research and innovation processes within the framework of public-private collaboration.

The main objective of this Living Lab will be to accelerate R&D in climate change mitigation in the regions of Southwest Europe. In its first two years of operation, it will focus on five of the most affected or vulnerable products in relation to climate change and related common factors: olives, apples, wheat and oats, poultry and aquaculture fish.

The Living Lab CONCAT LL will be a collaborative platform on sustainability that encompasses the entire Catalan agri-food sector, with the aim of facilitating the exchange of knowledge and innovative solutions adapted to specific crops, geographical areas and agricultural practices. Input from the sector and various scientific areas will provide useful information on the impacts of climate change on local agriculture, laying the groundwork for informed, data-driven action.

This project has received funding indirectly from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the ECO-READY project (grant agreement no. 101084201).