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The rangelands of West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region - which includes the Maghreb and Mashreq, Turkey and other countries of the Arabian Peninsula - are conducive to different patterns of pastoral resource management, due to the prevailing arid and mountainous conditions. Environmental change in the region is quite intense, resulting from population growth, shifts in land use and climate dynamics, and is one of the main drivers of socio-economic and political transformation in the region. In most WANA countries livestock rearing is a primary source of livelihood for a large segment ofthe population, and the governance of rangeland management and livestock trade are high priority issues for the national and regional political economy. Despite a fragmented and conflicting political setup that affects regional economic integration and the establishment of a common institutional framework, development trajectories regarding agriculture and food security have converged over time. Throughout the region, there have been repeated attempts to convert herding communities into stable and controllable producers through their incorporation into state and market mechanisms. Patterns of herd management and livestock mobility have been profoundly reconfigured, and while the movement of animals is increasingly restricted as feed and water are brought to them, the mobility of rural dwellers has intensified, through intense migration flows that are contributing to major transformations in local societies. Over time, development approaches, institutional arrangements and market dynamics have proven inconsistent in addressing the long-term needs of rural producers and ecosystems. Particularly in the arid and remote pastoral regions, local livelihoods have significantly deteriorated in recent decades, and are now increasingly shaped by processes that take place outside the realm of livestock production and very often beyond regional boundaries. The reconfiguration of land, livestock and labour regimes has generated tensions and risks that have weakened the capacity of pastoralist communities to deal with evolving uncertainties. The recent history of WANA drylands is one of strained economic development, stressed community networks and degraded ecosystems; the broader implications of the political and economic marginalisation of drylands have significant impacts for the entire WANA region and society.

Pastoralism in Asia features a variety of agro-ecological and socio-cultural settings. From Russian Siberia to Indian drylands, the continent is home to large and diverse pastoral territories and communities. Policies and legislation regulating rangeland governance and livestock production are of great concern in the region, as they affect the livelihoods of significant parts of the population. Herding communities across the continent are also highly heterogeneous in their historical trajectories, and socio-political institutions; during the twentieth century, Asian rangelands underwent important political reconfigurations that brought specific consequences for the territories and lives of pastoralists. The Socialist and the capital-intensive Green revolutions that have characterised the recent history of different portions of the region with the goal of modernising agricultural systems have generated significant and differentiated forms of uncertainty for most rural communities. Agrarian reforms, large-scale infrastructure, subsidy and loan schemes, along with integration into market dynamics, have been instrumental in supporting the stabilization of livestock production and the sedentarisation of herding communities, as part of their broader incorporation into the global economic and political arena. The overall impact has been one of widespread dispossession, dislocation, and marginalization, forcing pastoralists to reconfigure herd management and mobility strategies, and to constantly negotiate their access to grazing resources, market options, and income opportunities, including through land use conversion and migration. This review of past and evolving policy frameworks in different parts of Asia shows that, despite contrasting differences in ideological perspectives and development trajectories, the dismantling of pastoral resource management has always been purported as a prerequisite for modernisation, through the multiple and divergent agendas of increasing livestock production, preserving rangeland ecosystems and improving local welfare. However, the engagement with State- and market-driven dynamics has rarely been favourable to pastoralists. The political and institutional uncertainty resulting from these approaches has contributed substantially to altering patterns of resource governance for local communities, who have been seldom invited to participate in policy planning and societal debates, even though their livelihoods, land and livestock are often the primary focus of development programmes and modernisation strategies.

Complex service robotics scenarios entail unpredictable task appearance both in space and time. This requires robots to continuously relocate and imposes a trade-off between motion costs and efficiency in task execution. In such scenarios, multi-robot systems and even swarms of robots can be exploited to service different areas in parallel. An efficient deployment needs to continuously determine the best allocation according to the actual service needs, while also taking relocation costs into account when such allocation must be modified. For large scale problems, centrally predicting optimal allocations and movement paths for each robot quickly becomes infeasible. Instead, decentralized solutions are needed that allow the robotic system to self-organize and adaptively respond to the task demands. In this paper, we propose a distributed and asynchronous approach to simultaneous task assignment and path planning for robot swarms, which combines a bio-inspired collective decision-making process for the allocation of robots to areas to be serviced, and a search-based path planning approach for the actual routing of robots towards tasks to be executed. Task allocation exploits a hierarchical representation of the workspace, supporting the robot deployment to the areas that mostly require service. We investigate four realistic environments of increasing complexity, where each task requires a robot to reach a location and work for a specific amount of time. The proposed approach improves over two different baseline algorithms in specific settings with statistical significance, while showing consistently good results overall. Moreover, the proposed solution is robust to limited communication and robot failures.

Digital connectivity – loosely defined as connecting people through digital means promises to enhance our quality of life, as envisaged in Japan’s ‘Society 5.0’, which aims to spur economic growth and solve social problems digitally. On the other hand, digital connectivity also creates challenges and demands a quest for optimum equilibrium between economic growth and national as well as human security. The COVID-19 pandemic which erupted in late 2019 has accelerated world dependence on digital connectivity in order to sustain human contact. Digital means have allowed us to continue our lives, work and pleasure connections, and have simultaneously expanded digital risks at home and globally. The COVID-19 scenario has also demonstrated how digital technology can even threaten our sovereignty and basic values such as freedom, democracy, privacy, human rights and dignity. Japan and the EU approach the digital age with a common emphasis on leading standards to set and promote a human-centred digital connectivity. The two zones can cooperate bilaterally and beyond in responding to challenges on digital connectivity, as is stipulated in three key documents, namely Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), Japan-EU Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) and Japan-EU Partnership

The European Green Deal calls for a substantial part of the 75% of inland freight carried today by road to be shifted onto rail and inland waterways. As part of the Commission’s policy to boost rail freight, the Regulation concerning a European Rail Network for Competitive Freight (Regulation (EU) 913/2010) requests Member States to establish international market-oriented Rail Freight Corridors (RFCs) to meet three sets of challenges. These include the strengthening of cooperation between infrastructure managers on path allocation, deployment of interoperable systems and infrastructure development; striking the right balance between freight and passenger traffic along the RFCs, while securing adequate capacity and priority for freight in line with market needs and ensuring that common punctuality targets for freight trains are met; and lastly, promoting inter-modality by integrating terminals into corridor management and development. A decade after the Regulation’s entry into force, however, the results achieved in the Member States remain insufficient, and the share of rail freight stagnates at around 18%. The ongoing evaluation of Regulation (EU) 913/2010 is an opportunity to move away from a single corridor towards a European RFC Network approach. In order to facilitate this shift, the governance of RFCs should be reconsidered. In reality, the interaction between different stakeholders within one corridor is not always coordinated, not to mention the coordination among corridors. Digitalisation has the potential to overcome some of the inefficiencies derived from the fragmentation of European rail freight: it can facilitate the monitoring of performance in each RFC, improve the management of capacity by better coordinating the allocation of existing capacity, and empower RFCs to manage traffic, both under regular conditions but also when disruptions emerge. In addition to improving the regulatory and strategic framework, enhancing rail freight’s competitiveness calls for a rail network adapted to specific rail freight needs, which entails making the most efficient use of available funding. Against this backdrop, the 20th Florence Rail Forum, co-hosted by the Transport Area of the Florence School of Regulation and the Commission’s DG MOVE, discussed the next steps for the evaluation of Regulation (EU) 913/2010, including the role of a supranational entity in improving the performance of RFCs, and that of digitalisation in the management and operation of RFCs. Not the least, the forum sought to identify how the financing needs for the development of RFCs can be met.

On 14 January 2021, members of the European Parliament’s (EP) committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA) consulted with experts from the European University Institute (EUI) on topics in the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI). The AIDA committee is also focused on developing a strategy for Europe to survive in a digital world and eventually assume a leadership role in AI. After an introduction in which AIDA committee members outlined their goals and expectations for the role that AI will play in society, the EUI experts provided some general remarks on AI and algorithms, and then presented their original research. Their presentations covered the difficulties of writing laws and regulation for new technologies; economic interactions with AI and algorithmic collusions; and algorithmic content filtering for online platforms. The webinar concluded with statements and questions from the parliamentary groups.This policy brief draws from the experts’ presentations and the questions the Members of the European Parliament (MEP) asked them. It expands on the topics that most interested the MEP and provides further references for policymakers interested in regulating this emerging technology.

In its 2011 White Paper the Commission set the objective of shifting 30% of road freight over 300 km to other modes, such as rail or waterborne transport, by 2030. By 2050 the share is to be increased to 50%. In addition to supporting these decarbonisation objectives, a shift from road to rail offers to ease congestion on roads, lower the pressure on road infrastructures by taking over the heaviest loads and by reducing the risks linked to transporting dangerous goods. Yet, the progress achieved to date in the Member States remains insufficient, as the share of rail freight stagnates at around 18%. To ensure that rail freight takes off, its performance needs to improve drastically in terms of quality and efficiency. The sector and the legislators need to think fresh and bold and to consider holistically what can be done to overcome this stagnation.

On 15 November 2019, the Robert Schuman Centre hosted the first Annual Innovation Conference relating to the project “Innovation and Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: Global Challenges and European Responses”, which was organized by the Florence School of Regulation – Communications and Media (FSR C&M) at the European University Institute’s (EUI’s) campus in Florence. The conference focused on the challenges that are associated with the full realization of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is often addressed as the next Industrial Revolution, and which affects the way businesses, governments, and citizens interact with the physical and digital worlds. IoT can be described as a globally distributed network (or networks) of physical objects that are capable of sensing or acting on their environment, and that are able to communicate with each other. At present, its adoption is accelerating across different sectors, from which an abundance of smart, connected devices and platforms that are integrated into a wide range of applications are emerging. In this respect, challenges are appearing at the intersections between technology, innovation and intellectual property law. The Conference gathered academics, practitioners, officials from the National Regulatory Authorities, the European Commission, and representatives from the industry, to discuss and exchange views on these controversies.