Systemic evaluation of political and legal environment

The RUSTICA concept involves an array of activities geared towards accomplishing its central objective:

“To foster the technical validation, demonstration, and implementation of bio-based fertiliser and soil improvement production techniques focusing on waste from the fruit and vegetable agro-food system to close nutrient cycles at a regional level” and its nine specific objectives.

Among these specific objectives, objective No. 8: “Systemic evaluation of the potential of the individual wasteand vegetable waste streams processing technologies and their combinations into multi-valorisation chains” is addressed if it comes to an analysis of the political and legal environment of RUSTICA.

At the international level, investigations into conventions covering both the EU and Colombia are being conducted. Furthermore, RUSTICA investigates political relationships between the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Policy and legislation in the European Union are fundamental for RUSTICA, and important strategies, such as the EU Bioeconomy Strategy, the Circular Economy Strategy, and the Farm to Fork Strategy lead to new perspectives of the project. Apart from strategies, further EU legal sources not only in the sectors fertilisers and agriculture but also in areas like waste, chemicals, and emissions are thoroughly considered relating to the project and its objectives.

RUSTICA focuses on closed nutrient cycles at the regional level. In this respect, legal documents from the EU Member States and regions are scrutinized according to the project and its impact. In the course of this work, emphasis is placed on the five testcase regions Almeria (Spain), Flanders (Belgium), Friuli Venetia Giulia (Italy), Pays de la Loire (France), and Valle del Cauca (Colombia).

Text: Adelheid Wiedemann, Wiedemann GmbH (www.wiedemann-gmbh.eu)