News from PRIMA website

Barcelona, 10 June 2020. Covid-19 is causing an unprecedented situation at a global level, particularly in the Euro-Mediterranean region. In a region already distressed by the water scarcity and climate change threats, the Coronavirus pandemics has further demonstrated the fragility and the unsustainability of our way of producing and consuming affecting the most vulnerable categories such as the smallholders, threatening further their subsistence.

The current situation offers an historic opportunity to explore and promote the potential that it entails for the Euro-Mediterranean fostering the much-needed transition to more sustainable societies. It has highlighted the crucial role of research and innovation, and the need for reinforced international cooperation between scientists and stakeholders to increase the resilience of the Mediterranean societies to Covid-19 or possible similar future outbreaks.

PRIMA, Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area, has taken several measures to address the crisis, starting with the adoption of similar measures as EC for the management of the Calls and the projects, assuring to beneficiaries the needed flexibility for their implementation. Moreover, PRIMA programme will include a specific topic to increase in future Work programmes to foster the resilience to the Covid-19 crisis or other similar ones. Furthermore, in the immediate, PRIMA has welcomed and approved the redirection of already funded PRIMA projects, to address the Covid-19 crisis.

Ten PRIMA projects funded in response to 2018 and 2019 Calls are redirecting their activities in response to the Covid-19 crisis. Food security and agricultural livelihoods, access to safe water and sanitation, reconstruction of the relationship between humans and ecosystems are indeed key elements of social and health protection programmes. For this reason, the outcomes of the PRIMA projects can have an important role to play to address the effects and increase the resilience to Euro-Mediterranean societies and kick-start the long-term transformation of our system toward more sustainable ones.