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Water scarcity and security drive attention to water reuse in policy and business. However, water reuse may generate new water loops and challenge water governance with new and different types of water, risks, involved actors, and responsibilities. These challenges demand robust institutional arrangements related to water governance. This article assesses the institutional arrangements associated with four case studies in Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Israel. The findings reveal that the more diverse the water uses and users, the more challenges and risks, particularly those associated with institutional arrangements such as quality standards, sanctions, and conflict prevention, are likely to emerge. The weaknesses of governance models and regulations to deal with changes, uncertainties, and public resistance call for special attention to the design of the institutional arrangements before the adoption. Independent of the type of technology adopted, governance may be improved by ensuring internal and external water monitoring; integrating water management with spatial concerns; improving training, expert engagement, and civil society awareness; and reducing water reuse costs. In addition, alternative models that guarantee the efficiency of governance in attaining objectives and assuring the participation of new water users in the management of water reuse loops may also improve governance.

Despite the evident upsurge of e-commerce (EC) over the past decades, the peak of online demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the huge involvement of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the online businesses to survive, the extant literature has neglected to analyse how MSEs orchestrate their resources between internal and external investments. Past studies, also in the case of SMEs, have tended to adopt a more firm-centric perspective focusing on the organisational conditions that determine firms’ performance after the usage of EC, failing to explore the inter-organisational relations between MSEs and other actors in their ecosystem. Indeed, as MSEs may suffer from liability of smallness and lack of resources, they may rely more than other actors on the nexus of relations that emerge within the digital ecosystem generated through the usage of EC platforms. By relying on 37 interviews with owners or managers of MSEs operating in the food and beverage industry, we investigate the dynamics of resource distribution between MSEs and the other actors in the EC ecosystem. We identified the changes in interdependencies, the information asymmetries, and the power imbalances related to the interplay between MSEs and other actors within the EC ecosystem.

Women entrepreneurs’ performance in connection to their contribution to family livelihood in developing countries is yet an under-researched potential for addressing poverty and its roots. Their performance can be characterised as multi-dimensional. Next to business performance (e.g. profitability and growth), women entrepreneurs aim at a personal- and a societal performance as well. Although such a multi-dimensional performance reflects the interplay between the individual and the communal nature of entrepreneurship, especially in developing countries, the conditions for women to achieve this performance in such challenging contexts seem still unfavourable. This study analyses how entrepreneurial orientation (EO), distinguished in its three dimensions, of women entrepreneurs operating in a constrained context can leverage their business performance so that they can enhance their societal performance, in this case, their family livelihood. In particular, antecedents of EO, determinants of business performance and its influence on family livelihood are researched. The results of a structural equation model on data collected from Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs suggest that the financial capital and education level are antecedents positively influencing innovative- and pro-active EO, whereas risk-taking EO is positively influenced by financial capital only. EO, financial capital, business training and experience have a direct positive influence on women’s business performance, whereas barriers in the social environment exert a direct negative influence. Apparently, women entrepreneurs appear to fuel and shape their EO in such a manner that through their business performance, a strong contribution to their family livelihood is given.

Diverse and inclusive marine research is paramount to addressing ocean sustainability challenges in the 21st century, as envisioned by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Despite increasing efforts to diversify ocean science, women continue to face barriers at various stages of their career, which inhibits their progression to leadership within academic institutions. In this perspective, we draw on the collective experiences of thirty-four global women leaders, bolstered by a narrative review, to identify practical strategies and actions that will help empower early career women researchers to become the leaders of tomorrow. We propose five strategies: (i) create a more inclusive culture, (ii) ensure early and equitable career development opportunities for women ECRs, (iii) ensure equitable access to funding for women ECRs, (iv) offer mentoring opportunities and, (v) create flexible, family-friendly environments. Transformational, meaningful, and lasting change will only be achieved through commitment and collaborative action across various scales and by multiple stakeholders.

The AquaCrop model has a wide applicability for crop growth simulation under climate change. Nevertheless, its reliability for designing sustainable production system, particularly under environmental stresses, requires to be analyzed in advance. Hence, we carried out a 4-year field-modeling approach to address this issue. This is the first field-modeling study with AquaCrop which assesses the influence of crop type, irrigation water quality, and irrigation strategy and management on the model performance simultaneously. A total of 11 water-saving irrigation treatments were defined by combining two crop types (maize and sunflower), two irrigation water resources (fresh and saline water resources), and three irrigation strategies: full irrigation, deficit irrigation (DI), and partial root-zone drying (PRD). AquaCrop model was calibrated and validated based on the field-collected data during 2010–2011 maize growing seasons and 2014–2015 sunflower growing seasons. The model performance was evaluated based on RMSE, MBE, and RE indices. AquaCrop model provided a reliable estimation of both crop’s yield (RMSE = 0.31–0.57 ton ha−1, MAE = 0.29–0.44 ton ha−1, and RE = 1.08–13.24%), total biomass at harvest (RMSE = 0.87–2.40 t ha−1, MAE = 0.77–2.25 t ha−1, and RE = 1.46–11.75%), and the rooting-zone salinity (RMSE = 0.06–0.98dS m−1, MAE = 0.06–0.70 dS m−1, and RE = 0.03–19.33%). The model was also significantly capable in capturing the temporal variations of the canopy cover (R2 ≥ 0.93) and the soil salinity of the different soil layers (R2 ≥ 0.85). The highest range of uncertainty (RU) was obtained for estimating the rooting-zone salinity (RU = ± 11.58%), which induced the largest uncertainty in simulated crop’s growth parameters (RU = ± 16.56%). Based on the results, the AquaCrop model could be more reliably used for simulating crop growth under freshwater application rather than under saline water application.

Green (and blue) spaces receive attention as important components of cities that can help to mitigate the effects of climate change, support biodiversity and improve public health. Green space planning aims to transform cities towards urban sustainability and resilience. In a longitudinal study, representatives from eleven European municipalities that had previously been interviewed in 2014 were re-interviewed in 2020–2021 on changes in urban greening and related practices. The interviewees reported mainly advancements in dealing with ecological issues, such as new plans, strategies, regulations or funding programmes for climate adaptation or biodiversity support, as well as some progress in co-governance with non-governmental stakeholders. Promising developments include breaking professional silos by creating new units that can better deal with complex urban issues. In a few cases, high-level local politicians induced profound changes. These changes stimulated the development of new planning and governance cultures, resulting in more co-creation of urban green spaces. However, from a transformation studies perspective, incremental strategies dominate, and even when municipal representatives are aware that substantive changes are needed, they often lack the means to act. For more radical system change, significant extra efforts are needed.

Interdisciplinary research is paramount to addressing ocean sustainability challenges in the 21st century. However, women leaders have been underrepresented in interdisciplinary marine research, and there is little guidance on how to achieve the conditions that will lead to an increased proportion of women scientists in positions of leadership. Here, we conduct in-depth qualitative research to explore the main barriers and enablers to women's leadership in an academic interdisciplinary marine research context. We found that interdisciplinarity can present unique and additional barriers to women leaders (e.g., complexity and lack of value attributed to interdisciplinary research) and are exacerbated by existing gender-specific issues that women experience (e.g., isolation and underrepresentation and stereotyping). Together these barriers overlap forming the “glass obstacle course”—which is particularly challenging for women in minoritized groups. Here, we provide a list of concrete, ambitious, and actionable enablers that can promote and support women's leadership in academic interdisciplinary marine research.

A recent publication by Belton et al. raises points for policy-makers and scientists to consider with respect to the future of aquaculture making recommendations on policies and investments in systems and areas of the world where aquaculture can contribute most. Belton et al. take an ‘us versus them’ approach separating aquaculture by economics, livelihood choices, and water salinity. They conclude “that marine finfish aquaculture in offshore environments will confront economic, biophysical, and technological limitations that hinder its growth and prevent it from contributing significantly to global food and nutrition security.” They argue that land-based freshwater aquaculture is a more favorable production strategy than ocean/marine aquaculture; they disagree with government and non-governmental organizations spatial planning efforts that add new aquaculture to existing ocean uses; they advocate for an open commons for wild fisheries as opposed to aquaculture; and they oppose ‘open ocean’ aquaculture and other types of industrial, capital-intensive, ‘carnivorous’ fish aquaculture. They discredit marine aquaculture rather than explain how all aquaculture sectors are significantly more efficient and sustainable for the future of food than nearly all land-based animal protein alternatives. As an interdisciplinary group of scientists who work in marine aquaculture, we disagree with both the biased analyses and the advocacy presented by Belton et al. Marine aquaculture is growing and is already making a significant contribution to economies and peoples worldwide. None of the concerns Belton et al. raise are new, but their stark statement that farming fish in the sea cannot ‘nourish the world’ misses the mark, and policy-makers would be wrong to follow their misinformed recommendations.

Taking concepts from economic geography, this study decomposes locational factors as ‘first-nature’ and ‘second-nature’ geography, and argues that the second-nature geography, which is the concentration of entrepreneurial activities, helps entrepreneurs to discover entrepreneurial opportunities and gives them an incentive to integrate business with supporting activities in close proximity due to pecuniary and technological externalities. This study has taken the agricultural sector as the context of its research, and finds that the agricultural entrepreneurship literature has neglected the impact of the second-nature geography. Findings from the Netherlands show that the higher the concentration of entrepreneurial diversification in a region, the greater the likelihood that a farmer undertakes entrepreneurship on the farm.

This study examines the drivers for and consequences of internal migration to household food security in Uganda. Based on the Ugandan National Panel Surveys conducted between 2010/11 and 2015/16, we estimate differences in food energy adequacy of households receiving internal migrants from elsewhere. Besides food energy consumption, this study applies household food consumption score (FCS) and looks at vulnerability in terms of household’s expenditures on food. This enables to explore (a) the extent to which food insecurity is driving internal migration, and (b) whether remittances can reduce food security of the remitter. We find that households are usually worse-off when migrants join the receiving family. This seems a departure from previous studies that tend to find welfare gains to internal migration, mostly due to changes in expenditures or dietary consumption without considering any thresholds for achieving food security. Based on these findings and responding to rising youth employment challenges associated with rapidly growing urban slums in Uganda, policies that simultaneously support employment creation in both urban and rural areas are urgently needed to enable better steering of the flow of voluntary migration and to help ensuring food security.

Op het beperkte grondgebied van Nederland komen steeds meer complexe opgaven samen. Mogelijke oplossingen hebben vaak gevolgen voor meerdere partijen. Bij het zoeken naar passende oplossingen moet beleid rekening houden met de veelheid van randvoorwaarden: ecologische, sociaaleconomische en bestuurlijke. Maar hoe krijg je inzicht in de verweving van die veelheid aan factoren? Hoe kun je de complexiteit hanteerbaar maken? Wij komen in dit artikel met een voorstel voor een dergelijke methodiek en illustreren dat aan de hand van het vraagstuk rond de adoptie van natuurinclusieve landbouw.

De overheid pleit voor een transitie naar kringlooplandbouw, waarbij natuurinclusieve landbouw één van de perspectieven is. Bij zowel terreinbeherende organisaties, boerenorganisaties als de voedselketen ontstaan allerlei natuurinclusieve initiatieven. Door de grote verscheidenheid is het lastig om nog door de grassprieten het kruidenrijke weiland te zien. De WUR geeft een handreiking om het transitieproces inzichtelijk te maken. Aan de hand van vijf natuurinclusieve initiatieven laat ze zien hoe in een overzicht in één oogopslag de mate van opschaling en de mate van natuurinclusiviteit inzichtelijk is te maken.

Forests play a key role in a bio-based economy by providing renewable materials, mitigating climate change, and accommodating biodiversity. However, forests experience massive increases in stresses in their ecological and socioeconomic environments, threatening forest ecosystem services supply. Alleviating those stresses is hampered by conflicting and disconnected governance arrangements, competing interests and claims, and rapid changes in technology and social demands. Identifying which stresses threaten forest ecosystem services supply and which factors hamper their alleviation requires stakeholders' perceptions. Stakeholder-oriented stress tests for the supply of forest ecosystem services are therefore necessary but are not yet available. This perspective presents a roadmap to develop a stress test tailored to multiple stakeholders' needs and demands across spatial scales. We provide the Cascade and Resilience Rosetta, with accompanying performance- and resilience indicators, as tools to facilitate development of the stress test. The application of the stress test will facilitate the transition toward a bio-based economy in which healthy and diverse forests provide sustainable and resilient ecosystem services.

Improving the selectivity of fishing gear and practices has been a challenge for fishers, scientists, and policy-makers for decades. In Europe, urgency increased with the introduction of the landing obligation. Voluntary uptake of proven selective gears has been poor across the globe. To increase uptake levels, a move from science-led to industry-led development of selective gears has been advocated. In the Netherlands, gear innovation has, since the mid-2000s, been fisher-led. Nevertheless, this did not result in the assumed increase in uptake. Our qualitative study amongst Dutch demersal fishers shows that decisions to voluntarily adopt proven fishing gear are driven by a complex interplay of social, policy, and science-related factors. These can be attributed to two behavioural components: Willingness and Ability. Willingness, our study showed, is closely linked to: (i) intrinsic motivations and beliefs about sustainable fishing as well as perceptions about the motivations and behaviour of other fishers; (ii) the extent to which fishers consider policy goals and regulations as legitimate; and (iii) strong normative beliefs amongst fishers about the presence (or absence) of a level playing field, in terms of both the same rules applying to all and trust in compliance and enforcement. Ability is associated with knowledge, skills, economic, and legal possibilities to enable voluntary uptake, and tends to be the focus of science and policy. We conclude that a narrow focus on Ability as a driver for encouraging selective fishing is unlikely to result in real changes, and recommend a stronger emphasis on addressing social, policy- and science-related factors associated with Willingness in encouraging more selective fisheries.

The objective of the protocol is to make the socio-economic impact analysis (SEEA) operational for provinces. The protocol describes the method for mapping out the socio-economic effects in participatory regional sessions using a SEEA scheme. This allows provinces to implement the SEEA for their regional programs in a structured and uniform manner. In the regional sessions, expected socio-economic effects are inventoried and substantiated in a participatory manner on the basis of 'SEEA schemes' and points for attention are formulated for policy.

The transition to a bioeconomy requires vast amounts of feedstock to serve a wide range of functionalities in a broad panel of applications in sectors as: construction, textile, paper, automotive, horticulture, and livestock farming. Herbaceous crops and residue streams like flax, hemp, miscanthus, cereal straw, reed and verge grass offer a wide range of characteristics which can serve multiple applications. This report analyses and explores the potential of production and valorisation of herbaceous feedstock in the Netherlands and eventually at regional level. An analysis is made of current production and applications of herbaceous crops and residue streams. Present supply and demand were matched by an evaluation of imports and exports. Circular economy policies, agendas and ambitions were reviewed for relevant topics: climate change, circular bioeconomy, regional development; and at 3 levels: EU, Netherlands and province of Gelderland. Also, important considerations regarding circularity and sustainability aspects of biobased value chains were discussed, with focus on construction and textiles sector. Further, potential future use in products, indication of demanded product volumes for most promising applications, and production of herbaceous feedstock in the Netherlands in 2050 were studied. An exercise to match estimated demand and required production area was performed, taking into consideration typical scale of conversion technologies related to product demand. Subsequently a SWOT analysis for use of each herbaceous feedstock for regional conversion into bio-based applications is carried out to identify the main points of attention and needs such as knowledge, infrastructure, collaborations, regulations and policies, technology for the valorisation of different feedstocks for different applications. Finally, recommendations are provided to next possible actions to materialise the transition to regional supply of herbaceous biomass for making bio-based products by local circular value chains. Compared to conventional crops, flax, hemp and miscanthus are relatively small crops in production volumes. Each of them finds its way in a diverse range of applications as mentioned above. And despite the small volumes, flax and hemp feedstock and products are exported and imported for several reasons, circularity and regionality not being an aspect of decisive importance. Cereal straw as a side stream and verge grass and reed as residue streams are produced in much higher quantities, yet they are underutilised from a circular economy perspective and mainly ploughed under directly without prior other use. Using e.g. cereal straw as animal bedding first would retain the soil improving capacity while largely reducing the need to import straw. Towards combatting climate change, establishing circular bioeconomy and developing regional value chains, policy frameworks are set at the 3 levels: EU, Netherlands and province of Gelderland. What is missing, however, is focus on value added specializations and innovations in circular economy. As a consequence strategies for the transition towards circular economy and agriculture concepts are not clear, implementation schemes are limited and long-term coordination and support is invisible. As it comes to practical rules of thumb for circularity and sustainability of biobased value chains, specific considerations are presented for construction and textiles sector. Looking to the future (2050), herbaceous biomass will find increasing application in a wide range of sectors. For that, significant amounts of bio-feedstock will be required. The main reasons to expect that cultivation of herbaceous crops will increase substantially are: their potential to contribute to the circular economy and the use of biobased materials to replace fossil feedstock (circular economy policy goals), the storage of carbon (climate goals), and using less inputs like pesticides and fertilizer and less tillage compared to conventional crops (environmental goals). To stimulate the transition to circular and regional value chains in the Netherlands and to avoid the ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem, it is essential to kick-start and provide long-term coordination of the triple requirement: accelerate increased cultivation of the feedstock, increase (collective) demand for circular and biobased products, and investments in production capacity. Regions and Provinces play an important role in this. Also, regions and provinces need to review their strengths and opportunities and focus on specific value chains because the typical (economically feasible) conversion scales are relatively large and consequently a limited number of production facilities fit in the Netherlands.

This study is part of the overarching socio-economic impact analysis of fisheries project. The central research question is: What have been the economic impacts of the 2021 decommissioning scheme on Wadden Sea shrimp fishing licenses on the fishing cluster. By looking at the short-term effect with quantitative and qualitative data analysis and modelling, little economic effect of the decommissioning scheme on the fishing cluster has been observed. By increasing the effort of the remaining fleet, the effort on the Wadden Sea did not change significantly, lower catches were compensated by good shrimp prices with as a result a positive economic result in the year after the decommissioning. In the long term, the fishery is now limited with a number of licences around 20% lower than the prior number of active vessels, with no possibility of increasing again. Deze studie is een deelonderzoek van de overkoepelende sociaal-economische impactanalyse visserij. De centrale onderzoeksvraag is: Wat zijn de economische effecten van de 2021 saneringsregeling op de Waddenzee-garnalenvisserijvergunningen op het visserijcluster geweest? Door met kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve data- analyse en modellering te kijken naar het kortetermijneffect, is er weinig economisch effect van de sanering op het visserij cluster geobserveerd. Door een verhoogde inzet van de resterende vloot, is de inspanning op de Waddenzee niet significant veranderd en werden lagere vangsten door goede garnalenprijzen gecompenseerd met als gevolg een positief economisch resultaat in het jaar na de sanering. Op de lange termijn is de visserij nu beperkt met een aantal vergunningen dat rond de 20% lager is qua aantal actieve schepen, zonder mogelijkheid om het aantal te laten groeien.

Highlights •A solid knowledgebase and governance process is required to develop policies for sustainable growth of offshore aquaculture in the North Sea. •Environmental goals largely define maximum sustainable production levels. For seaweed culture this is limited to the scale of several hundred km2. •Definition of realistic ambitions is a process rather than a fixed value and greatly benefits from a ‘learning by doing’ approach.

Worldwide, national governments and private organizations are increasingly investing in Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) to foster both human well-being and biodiversity while achieving climate and environmental targets. Yet, investments in NBS remain uncoordinated among planning levels, their co-benefits underestimated, and their effectiveness undermined. This study aims to provide a spatially explicit approach to optimize the budget allocation for NBS implementation across Italian urban areas while maximizing their effectiveness in terms of environmental health. We explored three different NBS implementation scenarios oriented to (i) maximize the Ecosystem Services supply of NBS (Scenario BP), (ii) minimize costs of NBS (Scenario LC), and (iii) maximize Ecosystem Services supply of NBS at the lowest cost (Scenario CP). Once selected, we prioritized their allocation through the territory following an environmental risk index for population, and we explored the relationship between costs and effectiveness for the three scenarios. The implementation of Scenario BP costs EUR 777 billion while showing 31 billion of effectiveness. Scenario LC costs 70% less than scenario BP (EUR 206 billion) while losing 70% of its effectiveness. Scenario CP costs 60% less than Scenario BP (EUR 301 billion), offering just 20% less effectiveness. Our results show that employing the risk index for NBS allocation would allow for reducing the surface of interventions by saving 67% of the budget in the three scenarios with a negligible loss in terms of return for human health. The here-proposed approach can guide the national funds’ allocation system, improving its cost-effectiveness and equitableness.

There is considerable interest in the Netherlands and Europe in the potential of seaweed as source of food, feed and biomass for a biobased economy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the macro-economic effects of increasing seaweed production in the North Sea. The explorative analysis showed that the seaweed sector in NSR is in its nascent stages. Despite an modelled 10% annual growth over next 30 years, production in the North Sea Region remains too small to have any visible impact on global markets for seaweed. The size of the seaweed sector remains too small to function as alternative source of protein in consumer diets. The Modular Applied GeNeral Equilibrium Tool (MAGNET) was used in this study. MAGNET is a recursive dynamic, multi-regional, multi-commodity CGE model, covering the entire global economy. The best available data from FAO and information from scientific literature were used. We emphasise that results are indicative and should be used as such. More reliable data collection and improved insights in the different cost structures in various North Sea region countries can improve the accuracy of the simulations.

The study describes the socio-cultural value of fishing in the Netherlands in terms of: identity, social well-being, cultural heritage and social cohesion. It looked at the effects of policy changes for the fishing community or communities. The Netherlands has 44 fishing communities with an active fleet and 84 historical fishing communities. The fisheries ‘community of practice’ has a shared identity in which in the Netherlands the family business plays an important role. For their (subjective) social well-being, fishing is very important. These (historical) family businesses are anchored in fishing communities, often have locals on board and contribute to social cohesion, (im)material cultural heritage and the social well-being of fishing communities. At the same time, social structures seem to be changing due to consolidation, fishers with a non-Dutch nationality and continuous fishing. The fishing community is unanimously very concerned about the future of fisheries as a result of all policy changes. In particular, they see the redesign of the North Sea with less space for fisheries as a threat. The policy process has led to much distrust. This study describes how the reduction of the fleet has social implications and pleads for monitoring social factors, developing a shared vision for future fisheries and restoring trust

The maximum permissible ground lease prices for 2023 have been calculated in accordance with the principles of the Lease Price Decree 2007 (Pachtprijzenbesluit 2007). The ground lease norms for 2023 for arable land and grassland are higher in all lease price areas than the lease norms for 2022. This varies from an increase of 12% to 15% in Bouwhoek and Hogeland, Veenkoloniën and Oldambt, IJsselmeerpolders and Zuidwest-Brabant, to an increase of 37% to 54% in Zuidwestelijk akkerbouwgebied, Zuid-Limburg, Zuidelijk veehouderijgebied and in Waterland en Droogmakerijen. The changes in the maximum permissible ground lease prices from 2022 to those of 2023 are explained by differences in ground rewards between the years 2016 and 2021; 2016 has been removed from the five-year average whereas 2021 has been added.

We reflect on the innovation process that led to the development of the pulse trawl that was successfully trialed at a commercial scale, but eventually ended with the European Parliament passing legislation to ban its use. The ban was imposed despite published and emerging evidence that suggested that the environmental performance and catch efficiency of the pulse trawl was superior to the conventional beam trawl design. We used a stakeholder questionnaire to understand which factors undermined wider acceptance of the pulse trawl. The main factors where a lack of involvement of certain key stakeholders earlier in the process that would have ensured better co-development of innovation and a shared vision of the environmental or governance questions that needed to be addressed. Although the stakeholder process itself was seen to be positive, it was implemented too late in the innovation process, as was the implementation of an independent peer review process. We conclude by identifying a pathway for future fishing gear innovation processes that integrate the lessons learnt from the pulse trawl innovation process.

Population growth and urbanization increasingly put pressure on our planet’s availability of areas needed for food production. The dependencies on domestically produced food are increasingly judged favourable, following the consequences of the Ukrainian war, with escalating fuel and grain prices and less accessibilities to low-income groups. It is, however, unclear whether land is domestically available. Applying a food system approach, the main aim of this article is to investigate spatial foodsheds and theoretical self-sufficiency for food production needed to supply increasing future populations in a selection of cities, including estimates for Dhaka in Bangladesh, Nairobi in Kenya and Kampala in Uganda. The projected foodshed scenario areas for the years 2020 and 2050 are estimated for the production of three core products currently extensively produced and consumed in the three countries. They show that it is not possible to feed an ever-increasing urban population based on domestic production alone. International trade, new technological developments and new consumer demands for less area-intensive food production systems may give solutions to the immense challenge of feeding the world’s population with nutritious food in 2050. However, to ensure fair and inclusive transition pathways for low-income groups: (1) affordability and accessibility of trade opportunities, technologies and products, (2) a common vision aiming for the SDGs, including SDG2: Zero hunger and SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities as well as (3) best practices in co-creation and cooperation with the most vulnerable urban and rural populations, are highly needed.

According to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a “Whole-of-Society” approach is needed to initiate transitions to a nature-positive society. Many look at civil society to initiate and accelerate such transitions. In this article, we investigate strategies from Civil Society Actors (CSAs) to contribute to transformative change, with specific focus on Tiny Forests and Beach Clean-Ups in the Netherlands. Results show that CSAs have a clear Theory of Change to achieve their goals, and act upon that vision through assembling power and resources, developing policy-relevant environmental knowledge, mobilising public support and media coverage and initiating innovative sustainable practices. Adopting mosaic governance approaches, CSAs strategically position themselves in social and institutional networks, connecting professionals and citizens for political leverage. However, our findings show that the step from local impact towards transition remains a large one and the contribution of CSAs should be valued as emergent, co-produced and part of a broader transition movement.

Regenerative agriculture (RegenAg) is on the rise, aiming to make farming sustainable. But what isRegenAg? How does RegenAg compare to other agricultural concepts? How does RegenAg differ acrossEurope? Can RegenAg be economically viable? And can it be measured? This report identifies that it isdifficult to assess the current state of a concept that does not have a clear definition. We compared RegenAgto agroecology, conservation agriculture and organic farming. The most striking differentiation seems to bethat RegenAg is defined by its outcomes. This provides freedom to farmers, while considering the contextspecificity of RegenAg. Measuring actual outcomes is hard to accomplish and often has a weak relation withfarm level measures. Hybrid measuring approaches based on farm measures in combination with farm datacan be useful. This report concludes with recommendations to consider RegenAg as a set of objectives,rather than a set of measures and to start an EU-wide indicator system.

The objective of the protocol is to make the socio-economic impact analysis (SEEA) operational for provinces. The protocol describes the method for mapping out the socio-economic effects in participatory regional sessions using a SEEA scheme. This allows provinces to implement the SEEA for their regional programs in a structured and uniform manner. In the regional sessions, expected socio-economic effects are inventoried and substantiated in a participatory manner on the basis of 'SEEA schemes' and points for attention are formulated for policy. Doel van het protocol is het operationeel maken van de sociaal-economische effectenanalyse (SEEA) voor provincies. Het gespreksprotocol beschrijft de werkwijze om in participatieve gebiedssessies, de sociaal-economische effecten in kaart te brengen met een SEEA-schema. Daarmee kunnen provincies op een gestructureerde en uniforme wijze de SEEA voor hun gebiedsprogramma’s uitvoeren. In de gebiedssessies worden verwachte sociaal-economische effecten participatief aan de hand van ‘SEEA-schema’s’ geïnventariseerd, onderbouwd en worden aandachtspunten geformuleerd voor beleid.

Regenerative agriculture (RegenAg) is on the rise, aiming to make farming sustainable. But what isRegenAg? How does RegenAg compare to other agricultural concepts? How does RegenAg differ acrossEurope? Can RegenAg be economically viable? And can it be measured? This report identifies that it isdifficult to assess the current state of a concept that does not have a clear definition. We compared RegenAgto agroecology, conservation agriculture and organic farming. The most striking differentiation seems to bethat RegenAg is defined by its outcomes. This provides freedom to farmers, while considering the contextspecificity of RegenAg. Measuring actual outcomes is hard to accomplish and often has a weak relation withfarm level measures. Hybrid measuring approaches based on farm measures in combination with farm datacan be useful. This report concludes with recommendations to consider RegenAg as a set of objectives,rather than a set of measures and to start an EU-wide indicator system.

This study is part of the overarching socio-economic impact analysis of fisheries project. The central research question is: What have been the economic impacts of the 2021 decommissioning scheme on Wadden Sea shrimp fishing licenses on the fishing cluster. By looking at the short-term effect with quantitative and qualitative data analysis and modelling, little economic effect of the decommissioning scheme on the fishing cluster has been observed. By increasing the effort of the remaining fleet, the effort on the Wadden Sea did not change significantly, lower catches were compensated by good shrimp prices with as a result a positive economic result in the year after the decommissioning. In the long term, the fishery is now limited with a number of licences around 20% lower than the prior number of active vessels, with no possibility of increasing again.

There is considerable interest in the Netherlands and Europe in the potential of seaweed as source of food, feed and biomass for a biobased economy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the macro-economic effects of increasing seaweed production in the North Sea. The explorative analysis showed that the seaweed sector in NSR is in its nascent stages. Despite an modelled 10% annual growth over next 30 years, production in the North Sea Region remains too small to have any visible impact on global markets for seaweed. The size of the seaweed sector remains too small to function as alternative source of protein in consumer diets. The Modular Applied GeNeral Equilibrium Tool (MAGNET) was used in this study. MAGNET is a recursive dynamic, multi-regional, multi-commodity CGE model, covering the entire global economy. The best available data from FAO and information from scientific literature were used. We emphasise that results are indicative and should be used as such. More reliable data collection and improved insights in the different cost structures in various North Sea region countries can improve the accuracy of the simulations.

There are multiple ways to achieve healthier diets in urban food environments. However, people with different backgrounds will have different views on how food systems and urban food environments should change to achieve the healthier diets’ objective or overcome the identified gaps. With a participatory approach, one can determine common visions on what the future food system including urban food environments should look like. Moreover, multiple pathways with diverging emphasis can exist next to each other. However, the organisation of workshops without a network is time consuming. With the collaboration of the Collective Impact Coalition on Ghanaian Urban Food Environments (GUFE) initiated by the Netherlands Food Partnership, a series of participatory workshops with stakeholders was organised to identify the common vision on what the food environment in Accra should look like in 2050, which transition pathways were envisioned, and which action perspectives were identified for the pathways. Within the GUFE coalition, actions were proposed and for those actions a Theory of Change (TOC) exercise was employed. The results of the transition pathways were linked to those TOC results of the GUFE actions. The multiple interactions with the stakeholders resulted in three different pathways towards healthier diets in Accra. The emphases of these pathways were different: i) the cultural pathway maintaining and promoting Accra’s food culture, ii) the economic pathways optimising the food supply chain into Accra in every stage of the process, and iii) and the environmental pathway on greening the city with food crops and trees. The emphasis emerged from the group of stakeholders rather than indicated by the researchers beforehand. Although the descriptions of the pathways were drawn up independently, there can be observed some similarities and differences when comparing the action perspectives of the three pathways. The common elements of the action perspectives were education, stakeholder involvement and policies, although the implementation of these elements differed across the action perspectives of the pathways. However, the action perspectives defined were not as practical as the action defined by the GUFE coalition. Therefore, the pathways were integrated in the TOCs derived from the actions of the four action groups of the GUFE coalition. The pathways fit in the TOCs, although in most cases, the pathways can be linked to actions of multiple action groups. The participatory approach has greatly benefited from the existence of the GUFE coalition initiated by NFP. It created a head start for applying a participatory approach looking for transition pathways towards healthier diets in the urban environment of Accra. GUFE coalition members and other stakeholders voluntarily participated in the workshops and interviews. The composition of the groups of participants of the events was dynamic as people participated only once, people were replaced etc. Despite the changes in participants, there was a core group of people participating in most events. One aspect for improvement of the workshops would be to guarantee the engagement of representatives of all relevant stakeholder groups. The local, regional and national government as well as the consumers and citizens were underrepresented in the workshops. To make sure that the missing stakeholders are informed and/or involved, the next step would be to discuss the results of the pathways with representatives of the local, regional and national governments in Ghana and other missing stakeholders to raise awareness of the opportunities that are there to change and accelerate the transition of the Accra Food System towards healthier diets for all.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are promising in contributing to societal goals such as food security and combatting and adapting to climate change. However, existing assessment approaches of nature and biodiversity lack a clear connection to food systems and food system outcomes such as food security and food system resilience. We propose a new methodology to assess benefits and costs of NbS in food systems from a social and an economic perspective that can be used by researchers, NGOs and governments. The approach includes 3 steps: -1. Theory of Change, - 2. Food system framework and - 3. Extended stakeholders analysis including distribution of benefits and costs. The approach is tested in two case studies from Ghana using information on workshops, focus group discussions and interviews with stakeholders.-The case study results indicate that rainwater harvesting for irrigation (RWHI) and the Modified Taungya System (MTS) positively affect food security because of increased production, but both examples have negative impacts as well.

Healthy diets are unaffordable for almost 3.1 billion people worldwide, and in 2018, already 43% of the African population were urban dwellers. Our food systems are changing rapidly, coupled with rising dietary aspirations. What are healthy diets and how can healthy diets be reached and increased in an urban context was the question of project NOURICITY. Looking into different information channels to deliver information on healthy diets in a low-income area in urban Kampala, Uganda, two packages of interventions were developed based on information on the selected focus group discussions with parish representatives. The first package consisted of a flier including graphic information on healthy diets and three food groups (treatment group 1). The second included the same flier plus interactive voice responses (IVRs) as a phone call to deliver the flier information in a different format (treatment group 2). For the study, we targeted 450 randomly selected households, which were randomly assigned into three groups (control, treatment group 1, and treatment group 2). Respondents from Kanyanya (a low-income parish of Kampala city) were randomly selected. They were visited two times in March as well as in December of the year 2021, while the intervention was rolled out in the period from September to November 2021. Healthy diets are measured using the Household Dietary Diversity Score and the food variety score is based on a 7-day food consumption recall, while dietary quality is measured for a subsample of women and the minimum dietary diversity for all of the selected women. The results indicated statistically significant changes per group at household food consumption in March 2021 compared to December 2021. However, the results of the difference-in-difference method between the control and the treatment groups did not display any significant difference at the household level. However, increased dairy and meat consumption in the treatment groups was observed. Over 90% of the households in treatment group 2 listened to any type of IVR message. Although no significant treatment effects were found, almost all households receiving intervention package 2 mentioned that the IVR calls were easy to follow, while almost 80% indicated sharing the information with their neighbors and 92% enjoyed receiving the message. However, the intervention has potential but needs to be improved upon.

The goal of this study, conducted under the Proseaweed programme, is to learn from international experiences about the business case of seaweed farming in the Dutch North Sea. This report provides an overview and analysis over the limited data on the costs computed in previous studies. Three interviews with promising companies were conducted: Ocean Rainforest, Artic Seaweed and The Seaweed company.Literature and case studies were used to gather qualitative data on factors leading to successful seaweed farming, so-called success factors. The results show that site selection with ideal water conditions is essential for a good harvest and even the potential for longer operating windows. These conditions are not found in the Dutch North Sea and innovations would be needed.

Intensive cropland expansion for an increasing population has driven soil degradation worldwide. Modeling how agroecosystems respond to variations in soil attributes, relief and crop management dynamics can guide soil conservation. This research presents a new approach to evaluate soil loss by water erosion in cropland using the RUSLE model and Synthetic Soil Image (spectroscopy technique), which uses time series remotely sensed environmental, agricultural and anthropic variables, in the southeast region of São Paulo State, Brazil. The availability of the open-access satellite images of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Landsat satellite images provided ten years of rainfall data and 35 years of exposed soil surface. The bare soil surface and agricultural land use were extracted, and the multi-temporal rainfall erosivity was assessed. We predict soil maps’ attributes (texture and organic matter) through innovative soil spectroscopy techniques to assess the soil erodibility and soil loss tolerance. The erosivity, erodibility, and topography obtained by the Earth observations were adopted to estimate soil erosion in four scenarios of sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) residue coverage (0%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) in five years of the sugarcane cycle: the first year of sugarcane harvest and four subsequent harvesting years from 2013 to 2017. Soil loss tolerance means 4.3 Mg ha−1 exceeds the minimum rate in 40% of the region, resulting in a total soil loss of ~6 million Mg yr−1 under total coverage management (7 Mg ha−1). Our findings suggest that sugarcane straw production has not been sufficient to protect the soil loss against water erosion. Thus, straw removal is unfeasible unless alternative conservation practices are adopted, such as minimum soil tillage, contour lines, terracing and other techniques that favor increases in organic matter content and soil flocculating cations. This research also identifies a spatiotemporal erosion-prone area that requests an immediately sustainable land development guide to restore and rehabilitate the vulnerable ecosystem service. The high-resolution spatially distribution method provided can identify soil degradation-prone areas and the cropland expansion frequency. This information may guide farms and the policymakers for a better request of conservation practices according to site-specific management variation.

There are multiple ways to achieve healthier diets in urban food environments. However, people with different backgrounds will have different views on how food systems and urban food environments should change to achieve the healthier diets’ objective or overcome the identified gaps. With a participatory approach, one can determine common visions on what the future food system including urban food environments should look like. Moreover, multiple pathways with diverging emphasis can exist next to each other. However, the organisation of workshops without a network is time consuming. With the collaboration of the Collective Impact Coalition on Ghanaian Urban Food Environments (GUFE) initiated by the Netherlands Food Partnership, a series of participatory workshops with stakeholders was organised to identify the common vision on what the food environment in Accra should look like in 2050, which transition pathways were envisioned, and which action perspectives were identified for the pathways. Within the GUFE coalition, actions were proposed and for those actions a Theory of Change (TOC) exercise was employed. The results of the transition pathways were linked to those TOC results of the GUFE actions. The multiple interactions with the stakeholders resulted in three different pathways towards healthier diets in Accra. The emphases of these pathways were different: i) the cultural pathway maintaining and promoting Accra’s food culture, ii) the economic pathways optimising the food supply chain into Accra in every stage of the process, and iii) and the environmental pathway on greening the city with food crops and trees. The emphasis emerged from the group of stakeholders rather than indicated by the researchers beforehand. Although the descriptions of the pathways were drawn up independently, there can be observed some similarities and differences when comparing the action perspectives of the three pathways. The common elements of the action perspectives were education, stakeholder involvement and policies, although the implementation of these elements differed across the action perspectives of the pathways. However, the action perspectives defined were not as practical as the action defined by the GUFE coalition. Therefore, the pathways were integrated in the TOCs derived from the actions of the four action groups of the GUFE coalition. The pathways fit in the TOCs, although in most cases, the pathways can be linked to actions of multiple action groups. The participatory approach has greatly benefited from the existence of the GUFE coalition initiated by NFP. It created a head start for applying a participatory approach looking for transition pathways towards healthier diets in the urban environment of Accra. GUFE coalition members and other stakeholders voluntarily participated in the workshops and interviews. The composition of the groups of participants of the events was dynamic as people participated only once, people were replaced etc. Despite the changes in participants, there was a core group of people participating in most events. One aspect for improvement of the workshops would be to guarantee the engagement of representatives of all relevant stakeholder groups. The local, regional and national government as well as the consumers and citizens were underrepresented in the workshops. To make sure that the missing stakeholders are informed and/or involved, the next step would be to discuss the results of the pathways with representatives of the local, regional and national governments in Ghana and other missing stakeholders to raise awareness of the opportunities that are there to change and accelerate the transition of the Accra Food System towards healthier diets for all.

The transition to a bioeconomy requires vast amounts of feedstock to serve a wide range of functionalities in a broad panel of applications in sectors as: construction, textile, paper, automotive, horticulture, and livestock farming. Herbaceous crops and residue streams like flax, hemp, miscanthus, cereal straw, reed and verge grass offer a wide range of characteristics which can serve multiple applications. This report analyses and explores the potential of production and valorisation of herbaceous feedstock in the Netherlands and eventually at regional level. An analysis is made of current production and applications of herbaceous crops and residue streams. Present supply and demand were matched by an evaluation of imports and exports. Circular economy policies, agendas and ambitions were reviewed for relevant topics: climate change, circular bioeconomy, regional development; and at 3 levels: EU, Netherlands and province of Gelderland. Also, important considerations regarding circularity and sustainability aspects of biobased value chains were discussed, with focus on construction and textiles sector. Further, potential future use in products, indication of demanded product volumes for most promising applications, and production of herbaceous feedstock in the Netherlands in 2050 were studied. An exercise to match estimated demand and required production area was performed, taking into consideration typical scale of conversion technologies related to product demand. Subsequently a SWOT analysis for use of each herbaceous feedstock for regional conversion into bio-based applications is carried out to identify the main points of attention and needs such as knowledge, infrastructure, collaborations, regulations and policies, technology for the valorisation of different feedstocks for different applications. Finally, recommendations are provided to next possible actions to materialise the transition to regional supply of herbaceous biomass for making bio-based products by local circular value chains. Compared to conventional crops, flax, hemp and miscanthus are relatively small crops in production volumes. Each of them finds its way in a diverse range of applications as mentioned above. And despite the small volumes, flax and hemp feedstock and products are exported and imported for several reasons, circularity and regionality not being an aspect of decisive importance. Cereal straw as a side stream and verge grass and reed as residue streams are produced in much higher quantities, yet they are underutilised from a circular economy perspective and mainly ploughed under directly without prior other use. Using e.g. cereal straw as animal bedding first would retain the soil improving capacity while largely reducing the need to import straw. Towards combatting climate change, establishing circular bioeconomy and developing regional value chains, policy frameworks are set at the 3 levels: EU, Netherlands and province of Gelderland. What is missing, however, is focus on value added specializations and innovations in circular economy. As a consequence strategies for the transition towards circular economy and agriculture concepts are not clear, implementation schemes are limited and long-term coordination and support is invisible. As it comes to practical rules of thumb for circularity and sustainability of biobased value chains, specific considerations are presented for construction and textiles sector. Looking to the future (2050), herbaceous biomass will find increasing application in a wide range of sectors. For that, significant amounts of bio-feedstock will be required. The main reasons to expect that cultivation of herbaceous crops will increase substantially are: their potential to contribute to the circular economy and the use of biobased materials to replace fossil feedstock (circular economy policy goals), the storage of carbon (climate goals), and using less inputs like pesticides and fertilizer and less tillage compared to conventional crops (environmental goals). To stimulate the transition to circular and regional value chains in the Netherlands and to avoid the ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem, it is essential to kick-start and provide long-term coordination of the triple requirement: accelerate increased cultivation of the feedstock, increase (collective) demand for circular and biobased products, and investments in production capacity. Regions and Provinces play an important role in this. Also, regions and provinces need to review their strengths and opportunities and focus on specific value chains because the typical (economically feasible) conversion scales are relatively large and consequently a limited number of production facilities fit in the Netherlands.