International cooperation

The note to the Council of Ministers provides for the possibility, within the framework of the priorities of the Pillars, to contribute to transnational programs such as ERA-nets and Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs).

The management of these transnational calls is a process independent of the BRAIN-be 2.0 program subject to rules laid down in a MoU between contributing funding agencies.

It is up to the advisory committee of the pillar (s) concerned by these calls to decide on the relevance of these calls and the amount to be devoted to them.
With regard to the 2019 call, the Pillar 1 "Challenges and knowledge of the living and non-living world" advisory committee has given its approval for the funding of a series of projects under the following calls:

JPI Climate AXIS : Assessment of Cross(X)-sectoral climate Impacts and pathways for Sustainable transformation

The ERA-NET Consortium AXIS aims to promote cross-boundary, cross-community research with the overall goal to improve coherence, integration and robustness of climate impact research and connect it to societal needs. To this effect, AXIS aimed to overcome boundaries between science communities through inter- or transdisciplinary research projects.

AXIS is a successor of the previous JPI Climate ERA-Net on Climate Services (ERA4CS). Both are part of the efforts of JPI Climate to contribute to the implementation of the European Roadmap for Climate Services.

The AXIS joint call was structured into three interlinked themes:

Cross-sectoral and cross-scale climate change impact assessments
Integration of biophysical climate change impact estimates with economic models
Developing pathways to achieve the long-term objectives of the Paris Agreement, taking into account interactions with SDGs closely linked to SDG 13 (“climate action”)

BiodivERsA-BiodivHealth: Biodiversity and its influence on animal, human and plant health.

This call aimed at supporting transnational research projects jointly addressing issues at the nexus of biodiversity and animal, human and/ or plant health across the different relevant spatial, and temporal scales in an effort to support evidence-based decision-making.

The Call addressed the following major themes:

Relationship between biological diversity and animal, human and/or plant health: effects and underlying mechanisms
Understanding and predicting the integrated effects of global change factors on biodiversity-related health issues
Valuing/qualifying biodiversity benefits to animal, human and plant health, and promoting health-friendly biodiversity status as well as biodiversity-based health status

This call included two actions, supporting two different types of research projects:

Action A supported collaborative research projects, gathering different research teams generating new knowledge in particular based on the production of new primary data
Action B supported research synthesis projects, gathering individuals forming a working group which perform research and answer research questions using existing data sets.

Website BiodivERsA-BiodivHealth
List of funded projects

JPI Ocean “Microplastics” in the Marine environment

This call intended to increase the knowledge about sources, distribution & impact of micro-plastics in the marine environment. It comprised four main themes:

Identification, characterisation and quantification of the major microplastic sources, especially mechanisms and time scales of macroplastic fragmentation
New analytic methodologies - focusing on the smaller (nano-)particles and in situ measurement methods for all matrices (water, sediment, biota)
Monitoring and mapping of microplastics in the marine environment including its effects on the marine environment
Concepts to reduce inputs of plastics into the marine environment including through new recycling methods, raising public awareness, promoting behavioural change, socio-economic analyses