Just In Clime, aims at advancing and enhancing the understanding and operationalization of climate justice in the context of mitigation and adaptation policies and strategies to ensure a just transition to a climate-neutral and climate-resilient society, reducing inequalities and leaving no one behind. In Just In Clime, partners from Europe, North America, the Middle East & North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa will join forces in an international collaborative research endeavor to include the visions and perspectives of the “Global North” and the “Global South”, developing consensus with the UNFCCC towards just climate transition processes. Through co-creation and participatory processes, pilots in 9 countries (Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Canada, Senegal, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Lebanon and Tunisia) will approach justice in climate change in different sectors: agriculture, blue economy, energy and urban development. They will co-develop a novel policy-oriented framework to increase the understanding of justice in climate change transitions, its multiple dimensions and interactions. Jointly, they will also identify, document and analyze current experiences and good practices of inclusion of justice criteria in mitigation/adaptation plans and will operationalize the concept of justice and just transitions through justice-related indicators. Roadmaps for just climate transitions will be co-produced and actionable policy recommendations on how to design, implement and evaluate mitigation and adaptation policies/strategies to achieve climate transitions that take into consideration the needs and concerns of different groups of society will be produced and widely disseminated. Researchers, NGOs, specialized SMEs, and international Networks active in the fields of sustainable development, resilience and democracy bring in Just In Clime a rich tapestry of skills and capabilities, making the project truly interdisciplinary and innovative.

As Europe shifts to a bio-based circular economy, a plethora of new packaging restrictions have emerged. MAGNO seeks to improve packaging effectiveness, sustainability, efficient usage, end-of-life (reuse and recycling), and innovative business practices in EU food systems through revolutionary strategies shaped for the ecological transition required by the European Green Deal and EU 2030 climate target plan. These strategies will strengthen the EU food and packaging policy frameworks at a local and regional level. They will also increase social innovation, consumer participation and acceptance of new packaging designs and production models in cross-border food value chains through a web platform and a series of citizen science tools. At the beginning of the project, an overview of Europe’s ecosystems and value chains for different kinds of plastic packaging will be studied. A detailed quantification of impacts and solutions in terms of health, environment, raw materials, and sustainability will then be developed to set the basis of an Ecosystem Digital Twin software. The Digital Twin will be programmed to support the analysis of different scenarios which contributes by not only providing ground-breaking strategies for improving the packaging sector but also identifying the best options in terms of innovative business. The whole project will be supported by the active participation of food multi-actors (researchers, food business operators, food packaging producers, developers of sustainable packaging, packaging converters and recyclers, consumers, and local and regional authorities). Their contribution to the creation of results and validation of the final strategies will prevent and reduce plastic packaging pollution for the food and packaging sectors.

Energy problems play an important role in the global development of industrial and underdeveloped countries. Energy issues are usually accompanied with the challenging trade off of energy production and environmental sustainability. Recently, an offshore reserve of Oil and Gas was localized in the Mediterranean Sea near the Lebanese coast. The Lebanese Government set up a new “Gas and Oil Committee” belonging to the Water and Energy Ministry. The goal of this Committee is to publish tenders for Gas and Oil Offshore inspection and exploitation. An increasing demand for Engineers in the field of new reservoir drilling and fuel raw material processing is expected in the upcoming twenty-five years.The Lebanese Higher Education sector is a well-developed one. This sector regroups one public University which is the Lebanese University and more than 50 private universities. All the Lebanese universities’ curricula are one step behind in the field of Gas and Oil processing. This is due to the fact that the country is not a producer of this kind of raw material. Two refineries were present in the country before the civil war (1975-1989). Those refineries were completely destroyed during the civil war and their actual role has been reduced to the imported fuel storage. This project will address all the above problems by setting up a new teaching curriculum at the Lebanese universities by a joint effort with the European universities members of the Consortium. This project will also help in creating a network of Lebanese and European universities promoting academic excellence through joint research, education, and exchange of experience. This will contribute in the sustainable development of the Lebanese higher educational system and in improving the career prospects of scholars in their home countries.This new curriculum will allow forming engineers who can produce and manage innovation in the chemical, Gas and Oil processing, environmental, and new materials sectors.