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Research and innovation

Belmont Forum

Page about the EU's participation in the Belmont Forum, an international partnership providing knowledge for global environmental change

What is it about?

The Belmont Forum is a partnership of funding organisations, international science councils, and regional consortia committed to the advancement of transdisciplinary science.

It was created in 2009 and represents a group of the world’s major and emerging funders of global environmental change research.

Its goal is to accelerate the delivery of the environmental research needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability. It does this by aligning and mobilising international resources, by adding value to existing national investments and by encouraging interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary partnerships.

More than €150 million has been invested in Collaborative Research Actions in the past 10 years.

The Belmont Forum and European Commission work closely with Future Earth, a global network of scientists, researchers, and innovators collaborating for a more sustainable planet.

How is the EU involved?

The Belmont Forum's transnational research initiatives are developed in collaboration with the EU's research and innovation framework programmes and EU countries' innovation projects.

The European Commission was co-chair of the Belmont Forum in 2015 and 2016 and is a member of the Steering Committee since 2017.

The EU strongly financially supports international initiatives such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases, the EU-Africa Research and Innovation Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture and the Future Earth initiative.

EU-funded research plays a central role in the global trend of involving science, technology and innovation more actively in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Collaborative Research Actions

Collaborative Research Actions tackle specific themes. They have centralised objectives but the financing of the individual components or projects is the responsibility of the various participating agencies.

EU-funded programmes such as ERA-NETs, and Joint Programming Initiatives are directly involved and have contributed to

  • science-driven e-infrastructure innovation (2018)
  • scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services II (2017)
  • transformation 2 sustainability (2016)
  • food-water-energy nexus (2016)
  • mountains as sentinels of change (2015)
  • climate predictability (2015)
  • Arctic I (2014)
  • biodiversity and ecosystem (2014)
  • e-infrastructure (2013)
  • food security (2013)
  • coastal vulnerability (2012)
  • freshwater security (2012)