Innovation support services to be offered jointly by the ENRICH in LAC Initiative together with the ENRICH Centre will mainly focus on the following thematic fields by creating awareness about good examples and success stories, promote funding opportunities and facilitate collaboration.
Sustainable urbanisation is a shared priority of Europe and LAC countries, focusing on common challenges such as pollution, loss of biodiversity, energy, waste management, in connection with both environment protection - climate services and nature-based solutions for sustainable cities, risk prevention, as well as with food and agriculture resources -soil monitoring, water pollution impacts. There has been a significant increase in the number of applications received from LAC countries in H2020 Calls on cities, e.g., regeneration of cities through nature-based solutions (NBS), including innovative NBS for climate and water resilience in cities, and cultural heritage.
Bioeconomy covers all sectors and systems that rely on biological resources (animals, plants, micro-organisms and derived biomass, including organic waste) and needs a holistic approach to tackle complex inter-connected challenges, while achieving economic growth. It is an R&I priority not only for both regions, but also for the whole world.
Digital transformation and Industry 4.0 are two other joint interest areas for the EU-LAC cooperation. Digital technologies and innovations have become the most powerful force shaping business today, presenting new challenges and opportunities for business experts and managers. Investment in innovative ideas, using technology in design, production and marketing became inevitable in order to fulfil the customer demands and stay in business. Activities in this area will provide knowledge and understanding about the cornerstones of digital transformation, how companies can adopt themselves to the digital culture beyond its technical requirements, the ways that digital technology can be leveraged internally to combine creativity and innovation with technology.
In the field of renewable energy, there are a number of regional and International initiatives, such as European Green Deal, the Mission Innovation (MI), which is an initiative of 24 countries and the European Commission (on behalf of the European Union), aims to reinvigorate and accelerate global clean energy innovation in order to make clean energy widely affordable. Activities will focus on creating visibility for new technologies, solutions and strategies and facilitate collaborations in clean energy.
