On 5-7 December 2023, SOLO held its second consortium meeting in Barcelona, Spain, hosted by project partners Leitat. The goal of the consortium meeting was to unite project partners, Think Tank members and other external experts and provide them with the opportunity to co-create solutions together.   The meeting welcomed over 50 participants.

In celebration of  World Soil Day, day one of the meeting was mainly focused on the cornerstone of the project - the Think Tanks. They will co-develop the European Union Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe roadmaps, facilitate knowledge exchange and establish a solid connection to current and future EU and international soil health projects. Each Think Tank, led by different SOLO partners, will correspond to a Soil Mission objective and will support its mission and goals. 

The Think Tank workshops continued throughout the second day of the event and included many interactive sessions, which aimed to identify the knowledge gaps and bottlenecks in each Think Tank, as well as working together to find possible solutions. Project partners NIOO-KNAW and Fraunhofer led a session on the strategy for establishing the European R&I roadmap, followed by an interactive session on Think Tanks cross-cutting.

Image: Participants involved in an interactive session to identify knowledge gaps

The last day of the meeting explored other aspects of SOLO - such as the Soils for Europe Publishing Platform, developed by Pensoft, which will be used by the Think Tank members to create and publish different documents.

After that, the project partner University of Évora led a session which focused on the so-called “Soil weeks” - an event that all project countries will host annually to discuss the soil mission objectives at a national level and support the knowledge gaps identification process

The meeting concluded with a summary of the overall outcomes of each session by the Think Tank leaders, which laid the groundwork for the years to come. The event was a great chance for project partners to meet in person, not only between themselves but also with various stakeholders from all over Europe.