The SFEC will be the 10-year roadmap for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and for strengthening our society’s adaptation to the impacts of climate change. It comprises three components: the Multiannual Energy Programme (PPE), the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC) and the National Climate Change Adoption Plan (PNACC).

As part of the preparatory discussions for the adoption of the SFEC, the Ministries of Ecology and Agriculture asked INRAE to shed light on the use of biomass for energy production. The reports concern both the EPP and the SNBC.

• Report 1: Proposed assumptions for the AMS scenario of the SNBC 3 for the agriculture sector
• Report 2: Environmental impacts and technical, economic and social issues associated with the mobilisation of agricultural and forestry biomass for energy production in France up to 2050
• Report 3: The agronomic, technical and economic challenges of increasing the use of different biomass sources and converting them into bioenergy.

On 19 September 2020, Stefan Ambec, Director of Research at INRAE, submitted the report of the committee assessing the draft EU-Mercosur trade agreement to Prime Minister Jean Castex. This committee of independent experts was made up of three INRAE scientists, including Stefan Ambec, who was responsible for coordinating the work as chairman.

• Read the report: Provisions and potential effects of the trade section of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Mercosur on sustainable development
• Watch Stefan Ambec’s video testimony

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament and submitted on 23 November 2020, contributes to the debate on the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) within the European Commission, Parliament and Council. Conducted by a team of experts from INRAE and AgroParisTech, it puts forward recommendations for designing a CAP that reconciles environmental, economic and social performance and meets the ambitions and quantitative objectives of the Green Pact.

• Consult the press release

Food insecurity is affecting more and more people in France, yet current public policies in support of food aid do not cover all the needs. A study has explored a ‘new link’ between the central kitchens of mass catering organisations and food aid associations for the distribution of surplus food. This practice contributes directly to reducing food waste. Based on a field study, the policy brief presents levers for action for local authorities and the State.

The ATTER project is developing an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral exchange programme to step up agroecological transitions in local food systems. Researchers and practitioners are working on 16 local case studies in five countries (France, Italy, the UK, Brazil and the USA). As part of this work, two policy briefs have been produced:

• the first on local food councils as forums for debate on public policies relating to food systems and their implementation,
• a second on the impact of reterritorialisation public policies on food system transitions, based on the case of the territorial food projects.

Diadromous fish connect freshwater and international seas. They provide many societal benefits to the countries they cross, but their population is declining due to human pressures. The DiadES project was born out of the urgent need for a paradigm shift in the management of diadromous species. It is proposing a collective agreement with international objectives to be achieved mainly through concerted local action at ecosystem and multi-species level.

The project’s scientists are proposing a five-pillar roadmap based on international public policies (Sustainable Development Goals, Green Pact, Biodiversity Strategy, Water Framework Directive, Birds and Habitats Directives) and their improved implementation.

Achieving zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050 is necessary to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°C by 2100. This environmental objective requires transformations in all sectors of the economy. This policy brief, co-signed by IRD, IDDRI, CIRAD and INRAE, proposes 4 main directions to meet this objective while guaranteeing trade mechanisms.

To make the case for the adoption of intercropping at European level, the partners in the ReMIX project have drawn up five policy briefs. ReMIX is a multi-stakeholder project that aims to design cropping systems based on agroecology for the benefit of farmers and the farming community as a whole in the European Union. ReMIX exploits the advantages of species mixtures to design more diverse and resilient agroecological arable cropping systems. The project addresses practical issues and co-designs practical ready-to-use solutions.

By exploring the place of policies in people’s daily food lives, scientists are gathering evidence to explain why policies designed to improve food have succeeded or failed. Data on how people interact with food in their daily lives can provide insights into how to design policies on food, nutrition, health and wellbeing.

This methodological policy brief, written by scientists from 20 institutes and universities, reviews various qualitative methods for capturing citizens’ ‘experience of the food environment’ and their relevance to the design and evaluation of public nutrition and health policies.

The CompAg interdisciplinary research project is examining the policy levers that could emerge from the meeting of the ecological compensation obligation and the agroecological transition of the agricultural sector. This lever could both finance the expected changes in agriculture and provide ecological compensation commensurate with the foreseeable anthropogenic impacts. The policy brief resulting from this project proposes the ARC sequence (avoid, reduce, compensate) as a lever.

The spontaneous regrowth of secondary forests is a widespread phenomenon in Europe due to the rural exodus and the abandoning of agricultural land. As part of the European SPONFOREST project coordinated by Arndt Hampe, research director at the BIOGECO unit of the INRAE Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux centre, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German scientists have studied this phenomenon in five situations in landscapes in south-western Europe. Combining an ecological and social science approach, their results show that these secondary forests promote biodiversity and are more resilient to drought, that they represent a real opportunity to preserve and manage landscapes in a context of rural exodus and climate change increasing tree mortality in Europe, and that they contribute to people’s wellbeing. A policy brief has been published by the BiodivERsA organisation based on the findings of the SPONFOREST project.

In January, the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) published the first version of its “post-2020 global biodiversity framework”. In an article published in Science in March 2020, scientists from several universities and research institutes around the world, including the University of Bordeaux and INRAE, warned that the targets and indicators proposed in this document neglected genetic diversity – the basic building block of evolution and all biological diversity. In a new article published in August in the journal Biological Conservation, the scientists propose three new genetic indicators, as well as modifications to the CBD’s current objectives and indicators.

The UNESCO Chair in Global Food Systems was founded in 2011 by Professor Jean-Louis Rastoin (Montpellier SupAgro) and a multidisciplinary group of teachers and researchers from various institutions on the Agropolis campus (Montpellier, France), including INRAE. It covers all areas of sustainable food: from nutrition to the right to food, including marketing, social and management sciences, political science, economics, agri-food technologies and agronomy. With its So What collection, the Chair makes a point of conveying research findings in clear conclusions for action.

This technical guide, the fruit of collaboration between INRAE and the OFB, presents nature-based solutions for stabilising and restoring riverbanks. It details around ten plant engineering techniques based on living plants, such as beds of plants and seedlings, layers of branches with offshoots, and fascines of helophytes. The conditions of application, technical specifications and practical details of implementation in the field are specified for each technique.

Written by two wastewater treatment experts, this guide is intended as a support tool for project owners and contractors in designing and implementing a domestic wastewater treatment project using planted filters in a tropical context.

This guide brings together practical information to make it easier to take biodiversity into account in forest management in mainland France. It is intended first and foremost for forest and environmental managers and professionals, who will find it useful for enriching their management practices and providing information for their advisory, training and outreach documents aimed at public and private owners. Forest owners will also find useful information on how to take better account of ecology in managing their forests: what questions should be asked? Where can they find sources of information? How can they adapt their management to these issues in their objectives documents and silvicultural operations?