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The Project

Soil is essential for life on Earth, yet 60%-70% of EU soils are unhealthy due to pollution, urbanisation, and intensive agriculture – issues made worse by climate change. This soil degradation leads to significant economic, social, and environmental challenges, including reduced land productivity and biodiversity loss.

The iCOSHELLs project supports the EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe,’ aiming to restore healthy soils by 2030. Specifically, iCOSHELLs focuses on three key objectives: reducing soil pollution and promoting restoration, improving soil structure and biodiversity, and increasing soil literacy among society.

To achieve these goals, iCOSHELLs leverages six Living Labs located in the Basque Country, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. These labs bring together diverse local stakeholders to co-design and test practical strategies for soil health improvement.

The project employs a systematic approach that strengthens stakeholder capacities, bridges scientific research with practical solutions, enhances understanding of soil indicators, and replicates effective recovery methods. Its ultimate purpose is to develop and validate scalable solutions that can be applied across Europe.

Project Objectives

  1. Increase capacity and involvement of diverse stakeholders to enhance soil health through Living Lab co-creation activities.
  2. Promote a green transition towards healthy soils by establishing 6 Living Labs across EU covering different climatic zones and soil types. These Living Labs will support the EU Soil Mission by reducing soil pollution and promoting restoration, improving soil structure and biodiversity, and increasing soil literacy among society.
  3. Foster the understanding and knowledge on soil and soil indicators to promote different soil management practices.
  4. Increase EU soil health by fostering the replication of most promising soil recovery solutions across the EU.
  5. Promote and validate the establishment of Living Labs while raising awareness about soil health preservation throughout Europe.

Methodology

Management | WP6

PHASE 1
Setting up of ICOSHELLS process

  • Stakeholder mapping. motivations and recruitment
  • Baseline and regional ecosystem analysis and definition
  • Soil monitoring methodologies, indicators and web application.
  • LLs process refinement, set up and stakeholder activation
  • LLs and LHS success factors

WP1, WP3

PHASE 2
LL implementation

  • Co-creation with stakeholders
  • Solution development: refinement of ideas, prototype developments, testing and experimentation
  • Open Calls and expansion of the considered solution
  • Community awareness and engagement

WP1, WP2, WP4

PHASE 3
LLS Monitoring and assessment

  • Training of predictive modelling of soil indicators
  • Socio-economic feasibility and environmental assessment of solutions
  • Selection of best performing solutions
  • Identification of sites that can be transformed into LHS
  • Monitoring and assessing the LLs process & drawing operational lessons learned

WP3, WP5

PHASE 4
Best practices, LL long-term sustainability & solutions replication & upscale

  • LLs and LHS best self-sustaining practices
  • Replication, scaling up & long-term sustainability of solutions
  • Transfer of knowledge and capacity building
  • Soil indicators prediction tool

WP5, WP6, WP7

Actors engagement and involvement | WP1, WP7

Project Partners

The iCOSHELLs project has 39 partners and 2 affiliated entities from 8 European countries:

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