Join us
Who are we?
SOILveR is a self-financed platform of parties who strongly believe in the need for integrated soil and land research and knowledge exchange in Europe. Borders are man-made, the soil and some related issues do not adhere to that. This is one of the reasons for forming SOILveR. Another reason is that we recognise the added value of coordinating cross-border soil and land management research. As well in co-funding of (multidisciplinary) research project as in knowledge exchange activities.
Partners of this platform may be public or private institutions that fund research or knowledge exchange, or other organizations willing to support these actions.
SOILveR builds on the experiences from other funding networks such as SNOWMAN and address knowledge needs identified by e.g., the Horizon 2020 project INSPIRATION and other initiatives as well as those proposed by the members of SOILveR.
What are our activities?
Organising knowledge exchange activities such as
- Webinars
- Coffee break meetings
- Online conferences
Funding of research projects
- based upon the research needs of the members
What do we do?
- Fund integrated soil and land research aimed at addressing the knowledge needs identified in the INSPIRATION SRA or other SRAs.
- Organise knowledge exchange activities like webinars, coffee break meetings and workshops.
- Avoid excessive administrative processes and preserve flexibility in research funding coordination.
- Produce implementable research and focus on its uptake by end-users, at all levels from the national to the local.
Why do we do this?
There is a growing sense of urgency that unless we improve our use of soil and management of land, societies will suffer, and ecosystems will be damaged.
- Soil provides humans with key services related to several of the global Sustainability Development Goals formulated by the United Nations. While many severe threats to this resource have been recognized, soil and land degradation goes on.
- Stakeholders in Europe have identified many knowledge needs related to soil and land. These were compiled in the Strategic Research Agenda by INSPIRATION. Soil and land research needs coordination across regions, disciplines, and stakeholder groups to properly address these knowledge needs.
- A targeted funders’ platform around these issues is a key to leverage cross-country collaboration.
What will be gained by joining SOILveR?
We will fund research in a more coordinated way and benefit from experience and skills from various professional backgrounds while keeping the overall picture provided by our common research agenda.
Our platform enables us to:
- Benefit from larger total
- Get wider ideas and views through multidisciplinary
- Complement each countries’ expertise through cross-country exchange
- Ensure involvement of highly competent and skilled researchers and committed stakeholders from across Europe
- Produce implementable research results (guidelines, recommendations, decision support tools, new technologies)
- Exchange experiences between platform members on specific topics