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GOV4ALL (Governance and business models for living labs: Rural regeneration hubs for tackling soil health challenges in the Mediterranean region) is a four-and-a-half-year long Soil Mission project funded by the EU. It focuses on inspiring rural communities to participate in the identification, testing and dissemination of regenerative soil management practices.   

Coordinated by the Spanish company SAE Innova, the project has established five Mediterranean living labs to foster the co-design, testing and validation of sustainable soil management practices. These living labs will lead to the creation of rural regeneration hubs designed to provide services and business strategies tailored to the local context and stakeholder needs. Two living labs have been set up in Spain, another two in Greece and one in France.  

GOV4ALL will connect farmers, scientists, NGOs, policymakers and the general public towards developing a vision for the future of agriculture in which farming systems can generate incomes for the rural communities while protecting natural resources, with a focus on regenerating the soil. 

The GOV4ALL project will last 54 months starting in June 2024 until 30 November 2028.  

The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme with a budget of 11,953,240 euros. For more information, click here.  

The project is coordinated by Spanish company SAE. It brings together another 35 partners, including universities, research companies, and cooperatives from six countries — Spain, Greece, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland. For the full list of project partners, click here. 

The project will establish Living Labs: 

• Val de Drôme Living Lab, located in southeastern France 

• Altiplano Estepario Living Lab, located in southern Spain 

• Menorca Living Lab, located on the Balearic Island of Menorca in Spain 

• Aegean Living Lab, located on the island of Lesvos in Greece 

• Thyrea Living Lab, located in central Greece 

GOV4ALL’s core aim is to demonstrate that systemic transformations of how soil are managed at the regional level are possible. To do this, the project has identified rural communities that are able to build bottom-up participatory processes to address issues affecting their territories. GOV4ALL has established five living labs across the Mediterranean that will serve as a space for innovations, co-creations, tests, demonstrations, scaling up and, ultimately, dissemination. These five sites will also house rural regeneration hubs designed to implement the knowledge and business models emerging from the Living Labs.  

By implementing the co-creation Living Lab process, the project seeks to lay the ground for long-lasting and impactful business models that not only improve the soil health of rural communities in the Mediterranean but that also provide viable and profitable innovation opportunities. GOV4ALL aims to disseminate and share verified soil solutions, management innovations and knowledge with other communities across the Mediterranean.  

The most obvious direct stakeholder groups addressed by GOV4ALL are the rural communities where Living Labs and Rural Regeneration Hubs will be established. The project seeks to put these communities at the centre of soil management innovation. However, by coming together and upscaling improved soil management practices and effective governance structures, we will all benefit, as will our natural environment.   

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