The European Partnership Water4All has opened a Joint Transnational Call for research and innovation projects on “Aquatic Ecosystem Services”.  Deadline for the pre-proposal is 13 November 2023.

The Joint Transnational Call is launched in the framework of the European Partnership Water4All and supports research and innovation projects to improve water security in the long term. In line with the strategic objectives of Water4All, the results should contribute to the implementation of evidence-based, global, EU and national water management policies and strategies, including the Green Deal, the Water Framework Directive (WFD), Just Transition and the Water Action Agenda for UN Sustainable Development Goals. Proposals should show cognisance of appropriate legislation and policy frameworks at national and international levels that are meant to alleviate global change impacts on aquatic ecosystem services.

The general theme of the Water4All 2023 Joint Transnational Call is “Ecosystem Services”, with aquatic ecosystems as the focus, including inland surface water, groundwater, transitional and coastal water, and having water security on top of the objectives. Research and innovation proposals must address at least one of the following topics:

  • Topic 1. Mapping, monitoring, and assessment for a better understanding of ecosystem services in a context of changes, from local to global change.
  • Topic 2. Understanding and predicting multiple pressures (including anthropogenic pressures) – impact – response relationships in ecosystem services through advanced methods and techniques.
  • Topic 3. New tools and solutions for a better integration of ecosystem services into the management of water resources.

The call has two stages (preproposals and full proposals).

Read the call text here.

Eligibility criteria

Each consortium must be composed of at least three eligible partners that request funding from participating organisations from three different countries participating in the call. The general eligibility criteria are available in the call text. Participants are additionally subject to eligibility criteria of their national/regional Funding Partner Organisation.

For the Finnish national criteria, the guidelines are primarily in line with those applicable to Academy Project Funding. For example, in addition to a doctoral degree, the principal investigator (PI) of the proposed project must have other significant scientific merits. Usually the PI is a researcher at the professor or docent (adjunct professor) level.

Read more about national eligibility criteria here.

Funding

The Research Council of Finland has reserved € 850,000 for this call. The maximum amount per consortium partner is € 250,000. If there are several Finnish partners in the same consortium, the maximum total commitment is €400,000 per consortium.

Application

The application procedure consists of two steps; pre-proposal and full proposal submission. Only research consortia which successfully passed the first step will be invited to submit a full proposal.

Applications are submitted in the Water4All Joint Calls Online Submission Tool by the consortium coordinator. Please note, that some of the partners will also need to submit an application directly to their respective national/regional FPOs (not applicable to Finnish partners).

The submission deadline of pre-proposals is 13 November 2023 15:00 CET. The submission deadline for full proposals is 29 April 2024.

Please contact the Research Funding Services (research@hanken.fi) if you are interested in applying to this call.