The preliminary meeting of the project ACCREte was held last Oct. 28-30, 2005 in Bucharest, Romania. The National Meteorological Administration of Romania organized the event, which all project partners joined. In the meeting, activities and duties each partner is committed to accomplish during the project, were outlined. The project will be concluded in 2007 and an International Final Conference will be held in Egion - Western Greece.
ACCRETe is a INTERREG IIIB Cadses European Union co-financed project, which focuses on the mutual link climate change - agriculture and related risks. Specifically, it aims at higher awareness of people and sector operators in order to achieve different attitudes, and also to encourage sustainable agriculture which can suite on-going climate change.
The following destination partners join the project ACCRETe:
- Province of Parma, department of agriculture - Italy as the Lead Partner of the Project.
- Czech Hydro meteorological Institute, Czech Republic.
- University of Rostock, Department of Agriculture and Environment - Germany
- Municipality of Chrissoupolis, Greece.
- Municipality of Egion - Department of EU programs, Greece.
- University of Thessaly, Laboratory of Environment and Spatial Planning, Greece.
- Agrarian Institute San Michele all’Adige - Italy.
- Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Region of Basilicata, Italy.
- National Meteorological Administration of Romania.
- Agricultural Institute of Slovenia
A study is planned when a committee of experts from partner destinations reflect on the current status in the partner regions that pertain to climate change - agriculture impact, biological agriculture development and use of renewable energy. Once the study period is over, results will be published in a multilingual book.
A European network (Observatory) of universities, research centers and public boards will be set and will continuously monitor specific climate indicators, which are crucial to the issue in question.
Delegations of project partners will meet during the project life and deal with the following topics:
a) water resource management in agriculture to reduce the climate change effects
b) development of renewable energy, implementation of energy control actions and energy effectiveness in agriculture
c) increase of more sustainable cultivation methodologies, particularly biological agriculture.
Expected results:
- Transregional Declaration of Intents: "Transregional Understanding ACCRETe". All partners will undersign the declaration and will show they are firmly willing to follow up with research, cooperation, support of sustainable agriculture and activities in the issues.
- Manual of Attitudes for farmers so that they can be aware of threats of climate change for agriculture and they can also opt for short-and middle term attitudes. It is quite a simple mean, adaptable to any European situations.
- Awareness Campaign of the Media, a sort of social video to be delivered to each partner in order to be consequently broadcasted in all European Countries. The message must be clear to citizens, it has to encourage sustainable and environmental-friendly attitudes; let alone agriculture as an instrumental activity.
