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Deep sea technology (Credit: MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Policy Global research programmes

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European Geosciences Union

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Global research programmes

Many of today’s scientific questions are too large and complex to be undertaken by one institution or even one country, alone. Modern scientific research often requires international collaboration to obtain the necessary resources in order to address these scientific challenges. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and the European Space Agency, are well-known examples of such collaborations. To build and operate these facilities requires funding from national and European agencies and efficient collaboration between scientists.

European and world-wide collaboration is prominent in the EGU sciences. Example projects include ocean and continental drilling initiatives, climate change model inter-comparisons, ‘European Plate Observing System’ (EPOS) and ‘Water challenges for a changing world’. Without international cooperation these projects would not be possible.

Current EU policy

Current EU research and innovation policy encourages open science sharing and collaborative procedures. The European Research Area promotes free circulation of scientific knowledge, technology and researchers around the EU. These policies help to support international collaborative projects and forward scientific discovery.

Joint Programming Initiatives aim ‘to make better use of Europe's precious public research and development (R&D) resources and to tackle common European challenges more effectively’ [1]. These R&D areas include Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE), Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe (CliK'EU), Water Challenges for a Changing World, and Healthy and Productive Seas and Oceans, which are all research areas within the EGU.

Future challenges

The largest challenge to the future of international research programmes is economically based. This is particularly prevalent during times of economic crisis. Horizon 2020 provides substantial funding to many projects within the scientific community. However, funding is highly competitive, and many robust research projects are not funded. As scientific funding becomes more competitive, the European scientific community must endeavour to remain at the forefront of research discovery. Global scientific programmes that tackle fundamental, blue-sky research as well as applied research must continue if Europe is to remain competitive on the global scale.

Global research programmes EGU scientists are involved in

Recent EGU papers and activities

The General Assembly always hosts hundreds of sessions on the latest Earth, planetary and space sciences, many of which cover various global research programmes. These include:

Additionally, recent EGU academic papers are shown below.

Sources

  1. http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/joint-programming-initiatives_en.html
  2. http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/index_en.htm

With special thanks to Nick Arndt, Professor of Professor Geology at the Université Joseph Fourier, for drafting this webpage.

If you have a comment or suggestion, or if you would like more information please email policy@egu.eu.