Open Science Conference ‘Socio-ecological resilience across Eurasia: innovation for sustainability transition’ was held on 5-7 October 2021 online and on-site in Tartu, Estonia.

The conference, which took stock of socio-ecological resilience across Eurasia, with a particular focus on transfer and applicability of environmental policy, management and technology innovation for sustainability transition, was organised by Estonian University of Life Sciences under the project Erasmus+ CBHE INTENSE in cooperation with other partners of the INTENSE project. 37 participants took part in the conference in total.

The conference addressed the following areas:

• • Social resilience to global change
  • Indicators for assessing social-ecological resilience
  • Policy innovation
  • Management innovation
  • Technology innovation
  • Other topics relevant to socio-ecological sustainability within the regional focus of the conference.

Keynote speakers

• • Raimonds Ernšteins (University of Latvia): ‘Application of key principles for coastal sustainable governance: systems approach, integration, and collaboration’
  • Hans-Peter Nachtnebel (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria): ‘Role of ecosystem services and social resilience in drinking water provision for the South Eastern European region’
  • Kalev Sepp (Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia): ‘Challenges and themes of Horizon Europe Research program – environment and adaption to climate change’.

To ensure the safety of conference participants, most of the conference talks were done online, only with a relatively small group present in the venue – representatives of the conference hosting institution (Estonian University of Life Sciences) and guests from nearby locations. All the offline participants had passed the full course of the COVID-19 vaccination, and all the standard COVID-19 safety measures were kept.