The ocean covers 71% of our planet's 510 million km2. It plays a crucial role in regulating the climate and is a formidable living space, a reservoir of biological, energy and mineral resources. Essential for food and human health, it has always enabled communication between peoples and the transport of goods across the planet. The ocean is at the heart of the challenges of sustainable development, the fight against climate change and the loss of biodiversity. For all these reasons, its preservation is essential, requiring the production and sharing of specific scientific knowledge at both global and local levels, easily transferable not only to the structures responsible for its management and governance, but also to businesses, civil society and the general public.
To this end, the French government has decided to allocate €40 million to the "Priority Research Programmes" (PPR) within Programme 421 of the Investments for the Future programme, "Supporting progress in higher education and research". This PPR, whose scientific steering is entrusted to the CNRS and Ifremer, aims to finance ambitious, structuring interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary research projects in line with the priorities of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), to which France will be able to make a major contribution. The French National Research Agency (ANR) is responsible for selecting, contracting and monitoring the projects that will be proposed for funding.
To achieve these objectives, this €28 million call for projects, aimed at scientific communities, has been launched around 7 major challenges open to all research disciplines that address scientific issues, integrating the challenges of the blue economy, geostrategy, integrated management of socio-ecosystems, the well-being of living beings and societies, social equity, stakeholder involvement and society as a whole.
Large-scale projects involving research laboratories from different disciplines are expected. The involvement of broad interdisciplinary communities, at the interface of the humanities and social sciences, life sciences, environmental sciences, the sciences of the universe and engineering sciences, as well as the involvement of society, will be essential criteria. This involvement will be assessed on the basis of signed commitments (letter of commitment, administrative and financial document). The budget for projects submitted must not be less than €1.5m, except for Challenge 7 for which the minimum amount is set at €750,000. The maximum amount requested will be €2.5m. Projects should last between 4 and 6 years.
A second call for projects will be launched in 2023 on priority challenges and issues that were not funded in the first call.