ARIMNET · Coordination of Agricultural Research in the Mediterranean

Agricultural research in the Mediterranean is characterised by three main features: it is scattered within the EU members and in Mediterranean Partner Countries as well as most of the problems and challenges that the Mediterranean agriculture is facing are shared by all the countries in the area and even further, its objectives are largely the same in the whole area, even if priorities can vary from one country to another; the conditions resulting from climate change as well as the objective of sustainable development and production need to rethink agricultural research in all the countries and to begin its alignment in the whole area to increase its impact. This situation allows and requires a coordination action at the level of the Mediterranean (among EU members and between them and the other Mediterranean countries) to fight again fragmentation in fostering the convergence of national programmes and in founding a new critical mass to address the key issues (such as the growing demand for safer, healthier and higher quality food; the sustainable production and use of renewable bio-resources; threats to the sustainability and security of agricultural and fisheries production resulting in particular from climate change), to increase excellence and relevance of research, to enhance and strengthen the cooperation within the region in sharing the objectives and the priorities. These are the aims of the proposal of an ERA-Net as a European Initiative for Coordination of Agricultural Research in the Mediterranean (ARIMNet) which bears clearly a double ambition: to enhance coordination of agricultural research programmes within the Mediterranean area and to improve the cooperation within the area. It is gathering twelve countries (6 EU members, 2 associated country and 4 other Mediterranean countries) and the programmes that could be under the coordination action are gathering more than 3000 researchers and 300 million euros per year.