The Land Degradation of the European Union's Borders

On January 18, the Kick-off meeting of the EWALD project took place at the Library of the Lusófona University - Lisbon University Center a project funded by the European Executive Research Agency of the European Commission, and coordinated by Professor Svitlana Lyubchyk from Lusófona University.

The EWALD project has as its main focus the observation of the planet earth through space for early warning of land degradation at the borders of the European Union, and its objective is to develop an innovative structure of the Early Warning System (Early Warning System) , using ground observation data from multiple sources and scales, to assign a more effective response to threats at the external border of the European Union. The project is based on the argument that land degradation is one of the main global challenges, intensified with climate change, and that it poses a risk to the security of the European Union, for example, due to the socioeconomic tensions that are felt in the its borders.

This project has the participation of several international partners (academic researchers and companies) who were present at the meeting, namely: CASRE (Scientific Center for Aerospace Earth Research of the Institute of Geological Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine); University of Bergen (Norway); ECOMM (Ukraine); Cadi Ayyad University (Morocco); RESING (Morocco); University of Zilina (Slovakia); EIGES of the Lusófona University (Portugal).

At the meeting, several conditions inherent to the partnership between the organizations were discussed, as well as future ‘networking’ events necessary for the continuation of the project. This meeting was also especially important for coordinating the partners and the tasks to be carried out by each one of them to reach the important milestones in the field of research, as well as to discuss the future steps to be taken in the project.