Contexte

Rural areas across Europe are facing a diversity of challenges while undergoing transitions, i.e. processes of profound change.
The overarching objective of RUSTIK is to enable rural communities’ actors and policy-makers to design better strategies, initiatives and policies fostering rural sustainability transitions. This is to be achieved through creating an advanced understanding of different rural functionalities, characteristics and future scenarios of rural areas, their potentials and challenges.
Central specific objectives are to provide (1) a robust methodological framework for functional rural areas, (2) databases integrating data of different types and sources, (3) improved strategies and governance approaches for rural decision-makers and stakeholders, and (4) improved approaches for rural impact assessment and decentralised rural proofing.
RUSTIK addresses the topic by illuminating three key transitions in rural areas, i.e. (1) socio-economic/demographic, (2) climate change and environmental, and (3) digital.

Objectives

The specific objectives are to provide:

Activities

RUSTIK applies the multi-actor approach (MAA) with academic actors, municipal and regional authorities, small and medium enterprises and European umbrella organisations collaborating at multiple levels, representing 13 countries. 14 Living Labs (LL) are core to the approach, where scientific and practice partners co-plan and co-execute research to better identify needs, test novel data collection/analysis methods, and policy evaluation processes.