Welcome to Precilience!

Precilience – precision resilience for agriculture and forestry – is a new Horizon Europe project that began on 1st May 2024. Moved by the urgent need to adapt to climate change in the much-impacted boreal region of Europe, our goal is to monitor and analyse the needs of the production-ecosystem, designing and applying precise solutions where needed.

I’m Petteri Karisto, Project Coordinator for Precilience and Research Scientist at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). Unbridled curiosity and a willingness to embrace uncertainty has led me to pursue a career path that sits between theoretical eco-evo and practical plant pathology. In my work, I have felt that theoretical research can be somewhat removed from practical solutions and real-world impact, and that translating practical applications into society-wide change is a significant challenge. This is where Precilience comes in!

We want to combine the best available scientific data and theoretical understanding together with practical implementation, aiming to catalyse a holistic, systemic transformation towards climate resilient production. Scientists on the project have an amazing opportunity to collaborate with multiple stakeholders – experts, regional authorities, advisory organisations, forest owners, farmers, the finance sector and more – to co-create adaptation roadmaps and practical solutions, with due consideration of other vital enabling factors such as resource and material availability and financial sustainability.

The Precilience team in Helsinki, May 2024.

It’s daunting, but I’m excited. We have the critical funding, infrastructure and a diverse, highly qualified team made up individuals from 16 organisations, many of whom I was honoured to meet at the end of May in Helsinki for the project kick-off meeting. Seeing our project collaborators come together, with their energy, expertise and mutual drive to leave a positive impact on our only earth has given me great confidence and a reason to be positive about climate-resilient solutions.

I do hope you will follow and engage with our project over the next four and a half years. Sign up to our newsletter to receive the latest project news.