PRUDENT aspires to revolutionize agriculture and forestry by promoting sustainable practices and innovative farming technologies. The project will explore the use of “nudges”, small changes in how farmers and foresters make decisions, to encourage them to adopt more sustainable approaches. These nudges will be tested in real-life situations alongside policy changes to see their combined effect on sustainability.
Innovative tools, like web or mobile apps, will be developed to help farmers and foresters regulate their actions and make lasting changes, supporting these behaviour changes. Different types of farming and forestry systems across Europe will be studied to understand their unique challenges.
The insights gained from this research will create new ways of thinking about agriculture and forestry, including social innovations, business models, and policy recommendations.
General aims
The overall objective of PRUDENT is to transform agriculture and forestry into more sustainable systems that benefit people and the environment. In particular, the project will investigate the effectiveness of green nudges in promoting sustainable practices and technologies in the agricultural and forestry sectors, and will develop social innovation and business models, as well as policies, with a particular focus on supporting the future CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) and the goals of the European Green Deal (EGD), including the Farm to Fork, EU biodiversity, EU Forest Strategies. More in details, PRUDENT aims at:
1. Identifying and mapping decision-making factors affecting the transition to sustainable practices in agriculture and forestry.
2. Testing innovative green nudging practices through behavioral experiments to promote sustainable practices.
3. Developing social innovations, cooperation models, and business models to integrate sustainability into agriculture and forestry systems
4. Designing policy recommendations and tools to support the future CAP and European Green Deal initiatives.
5. Build capacity among stakeholders, disseminate project results, and upscale nudging practices through collaboration and communication activities.
CMCC role
CMCC is an Affiliated Entity to the POLIMI, and it will be mainly involved in work package (WP) 2: Testing innovative nudging practices. The CMCC research team will be involved in the designing of the methodology for planning, managing, and evaluating the implementation of green nudging practices in the UC pilots; Testing innovative nudges to promote sustained behavioural change towards sustainable agriculture and forestry; investigating the behavioural factors which should be leveraged to generate farmers/foresters’ behavioural change. All these research activities will help to develop innovative tools to test nudging practices and improve farmers/foresters’ self-regulatory capacity.
Activities
The project is divided into four research-oriented WPs:
WP1 Green nudges landscape analysis;
WP2 Testing innovative nudging practices;
WP3 Business models, social innovation and cooperation for more sustainable farming and forestry systems;
WP4 Green Nudges as a policy instrument for CAP post 2027 and EGD policies;
plus three ancillary work packages: Dissemination, Communication and Exploitation (WP5), Project Management and Quality Assurance (WP6) and Ethics requirements (WP7).
Expected results
PRUDENT will provide a set of social innovations and business models establishing roadmaps for a shift towards sustainable agriculture and forestry and will develop a series of policy recommendations and tools to foster behaviourally informed policy design and implementation.
Throughout the project’s lifespan, multiple value chain actors, at various levels of society, will actively participate in co-creation activities to establish a mutual understanding of the benefits and bottlenecks of the value chain, as well as effective transformation pathways to change.
Partners
- Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI)
- Eigen Vermogen van Het Instituut voor Landbouw- En Visserijonderzoek (Ev Ilvo)
- Università degli studi di Trento (UniTrento)
- Green & Digital Idiotiki Kefalaiouchiki Etaireia (G&D)
- Udruzenje Eko-Inovacija na Balkanu (ABE)
- Athens University of Economics and Business – Research Center (AUEB-RC)
- European Forest Institute (EFI)
- Q-Plan International Advisors Pc (Q-PLAN)
- Innovatiesteunpunt voor Landbouw Enplatteland (ISP)
- Agrifood Lithuania Dih (AFL)
- Associazione Nazionale Condifesa Italia (ASNACODI ITALIA)
- Boerennatuur Vlaanderen (BNVL)
- Jrc -Joint Research Centre- European Commission (JRC)