CIHEAM: initiator of the Euro-Mediterranean ERA-Net

Following the Seminar of Rabat, organized in March 2006, CIHEAM proposed the setting up of a Euro-Mediterranean ERA-Net for agricultural research, which was intended to link up programmes in the northern, southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Region.

In September 2007, DG Research of the European Commission confirmed that work on the ERA-Net was to go ahead, with the official name of ARIM-Net (Coordination of Agricultural Research in the Mediterranean).


Strategic aim and scientific and technological objectives

ARIM-Net has as its strategic objective to reinforce the scientific coordination of programmes in agricultural research and secondly the scientific cooperation between countries of the Mediterranean Area, including EU and non-EU member states, in order to maximise its support to sustainable development, notably, management of natural resources and mitigation of threats resulting from global change.

To reach this overall goal, ARIM-Net will:

 Enhance synergies between research programmes in view of avoiding duplication of efforts and orienting spared resources to unaddressed issues;

 Raise cooperation between the organisations in order to carry out ambitious research projects that cannot be undertaken at an individual level;

 Outreach the benefit of the network beyond the consortium to create spill-over effects impacting all concerned research organisations, and out of the Mediterranean area, export the concept to other relevant areas, the Black Sea area or other neighbourhood areas, for instance.


Concept of the project

The concept of ARIMNet is to foster the coordination of the network participants’ programmes trough a need-driven approach based on four steps each one contributing on its own to the reinforcement of the cooperation, and at the same time providing the basis for the design of the next stages:

  Information exchange and mapping to improve mutual acquaintance and share of best practices;

  Strategic orientation of research programmes to eliminate overlapping and open novel issues;

  Joint activities to consolidate and harmonise partnership outline common vision and agenda;

  Calls for proposals to expand the structuring impact of the network



Expected Achievements of the project

ARIMNet will result in three main achievements:

  Better coordination between partners’ agricultural research programmes through: monitoring of participating countries’ agricultural research programmes; identification of duplications, complementarities, gaps, and synergies between partners’ agricultural research programmes; redesign of partners’ agricultural research programmes in order to eliminate overlapping and address uncovered topics;

   In-depth and durable cooperation between the ARIMNet partners thanks to: transnational joint activities; institutional arrangement for facilitating the implementation of joint research projects; design and development of common methodologies for programme management;

   Long term contribution to structuring the European Research Area by: elaboration of common vision on agricultural research in the Mediterranean area; proposal for a strategic outline of agricultural research in the Mediterranean area; take-up activities for bringing the experience, methods and tools gained by ARIMNet into use by other geographical areas.



Consortium


Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA, France)

Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD, France)

Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali (MIPAAF, Italy)

Institut national de la recherche agronomique d'Algérie (INRAA, Algeria)

Instituto nacional de Investigacion y Technologia Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA, Spain)

General Directorate of Agriculture Research, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (TAGEM, Türkiye)

Agricultural Research Centre (ARC, Egypt)

Fundaçao para a Ciència e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal)

Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine (IAV, Morocco)

National Agricultural Research Foundation (NAGREF, Greece)

Institution of Agricultural Research and Higher Education (IRESA, Tunisia)

Agricultural Research Institute (ARI, Cyprus)

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI, Israel)