From Research to Action: MAIA’s Nine Objectives for Advancing Climate Resilience

Summary

MAIA’s nine objectives:

The MAIA Project aims to enhance the impact of European climate research by creating synergies, facilitating upscaling, and maximizing joint impact through enhanced connection of knowledge and networks. To achieve this overarching objective, the project has set out nine specific objectives that will be operationalized through various actions organized into different work packages.

The specific objectives of the MAIA Project are:

1. Connecting networks of climate actors by liaising with existing networks on Climate Change research and innovation and engaging with pan-European, regional and cities networks and partnerships to activate links between these networks, facilitate active dialogue, and a more effective flow of information and knowledge.
2. Making knowledge on climate resilience more accessible and usable for regions, cities, and local communities by specifying a European Climate Adaptation and Mitigation taxonomy and ontology, interconnecting existing knowledge platforms into a MAIA Climate Knowledge Platforms Network, and developing a next generation EU Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Portal.
3. Helping climate change research projects to establish synergies and develop clustering activities that deliver a larger impact by creating a synergy group, i.e. ‘EU Climate Change research Cluster’ of projects, sparking cooperation of relevant climate research projects in different topics, under a number of thematic working groups under the coordination and facilitation of MAIA.
4. Developing business and exploitation-support services, including access to funding, to help sustain decision support tools and climate resilience platforms.
5. Supporting the upscaling of the solutions and tools produced by individual projects by activating a consolidated network of problem owners, solution providers, and enablers, and setting the ground for the transferability of solutions by identifying key drivers and barriers for their adoption into different contexts and their replicability across scales.
6. Increasing the scale and significance of the dissemination and communication actions of the EU climate change research projects by designing and implementing innovative activities and a comprehensive marketing campaign to increase the outreach of climate change research results.
7. Organizing a series of dialogues, e.g. within the frame of Learning and Action Alliances(LAAs), Policy Roundtables or Policy-Science Dialogues, to support awareness raising on best climate science and identify research gaps and key drivers for behavioral change and societal transformation.
8. Implementing a Gap/Research solutions matching tool – a web application utilizing the enhanced knowledge connectivity provided by the MAIA Next generation EU Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Portal to effectively help match the research gaps and stakeholders’ needs with existing research themes and innovative solutions.
9. Using SSH (e.g., behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, arts) to identify key variables driving behavioral transformation under different contexts, with the additional aim of providing a clear contribution to the goals of the European Climate Pact by raising awareness of-and engagement in this initiative and spreading “good governance practices and successes.” Subsequently, using Strategic Communication to craft powerful messages, define the most adequate formats and channels for a more effective dissemination and communication of climate change research results to each of our distinct target audiences.