Trends and Scenarios for Observatories Networking (Report for Medspring Deliverable D8.9) - Arvanitis, Rigas (France : IRD, 2017)
This report is based on analysis that was developed under Work Package 8 of the MEDSPRING project « Policy, societal challenges and cooperation observatory ». After having identified a number of Euro-Mediterranean thematic observatories, mainly in the environmental domains, it was decided to organise a survey providing a comprehensive analysis of their functionalities, objectives and scope. The aim was both to understand the observatories’ needs and roles in the regional Euro-Mediterranean cooperation on research and innovation and to examine the possibility to establish synergies between these and other actors of research cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean (see deliverables D8.1 end D8.2). The results of the catalogue of observatories and survey were presented and discussed in workshops organized in Paris, Beirut and Marseille, and in various opportunities offered by the MedSpring project. After examining the resulted yielded in these exchanges, it has been decided to focus on Water, in order to examine the issues raised in various opportunities by the Medspring project: what are the linkages between environmental issues, food security and energy? What should be the best way to tackle these issues? What is the role of environmental observatories? What are the needs of these observatories? This permitted to organize the discussion in a meeting in Marseille where representatives from various observatories discussed these issues on the specific case of water. As a result, a typology of observatories was established and proposed to discussion. To further our knowledge about these structures, some additional interviews were conducted and a one week fieldwork in Tunisia permitted to visit a series of cases. This report is based on all these results and presents some major trends we have observed and present some proposals to be be discussed by the European Commission and Mediterranean partner countries.
Keywords: report; technical report; Rapport final, projet Européen MEDSPRING; POLITIQUE DE LA RECHERCHE; environment; observatoire