Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change and the expansion of agricultural land for the production of specific agroforestry products known as forest risk commodities (FRCs), represents its main direct driver in tropical countries. European Union (EU) consumption of FRCs accounts for 16% of the global embedded deforestation (an area almost the size of Luxemburg). Ensuring the sustainable supply of FRCs will help EU to achieve its climate targets and increase trust among consumers. However, deforestation is largely considered a “forestry problem” despite links to agriculture, trade and consumption patterns, all along supply chains. This is also the case in training offers of higher education and vocational training organisations (HEI&VETs), resulting in a lack of cross-sectoral approaches and interdisciplinarity in core DFSC disciplines (compliance, technology and corporate social responsibility), for students and professionals. In previous years, most collective commitments made by private and public actors for deforestation-free supply chains (DFSC) have failed to invert the trend and the European Commission (EC) has recently approved the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), to ban the import of FRCs produced on land deforested after 2020. Based on these combined aspects, there is a clear need for innovative approaches to education, training and capacity building on reducing deforestation risk in supply chains of FRCs in EU. EMMA4EU will respond to these gaps by bridging the different disciplines and sectors, connecting HEI&VETs, businesses, public organisations and NGOs to launch an EU alliance that will develop innovative training solutions to create a new profession: the DFSC manager. The new skill sets and professions will combine digital, green and interdisciplinarity skills to support the transition to more sustainable DFSCs of FRCs, implementation of the EUDR, a greener and more circular economy and reaching climate-neutrality by 2050.

Tuberculosis (TB) is the single biggest infectious cause of death globally, a situation worsened by COVID-19. Revolutionary new TB triage tests are required, including at facilities where people are accessible and efficiently referable to confirmatory testing. The Cough Audio triaGE for TB (CAGE-TB) study was EDCTP2-funded to 1) collect cough sounds at people’s point-of-entry into primary care facilities (South Africa) and derive an audio classifier, 2) validate diagnostic accuracy in independent cohorts (South Africa, Uganda), and 3) deploy mixed methods research (costing, implementation science, medical anthropology) to inform design and implementation so that this classifier, which will report people as “likely TB” or “unlikely TB” for confirmatory testing, is embedded within a user-friendly mHealth app with on-device offline computation. Per the original call’s objective, CAGE-TB’s goal was to deliver an accurate validated mHealth app usable in trials assessing clinical outcomes (necessary for adoption). Uniquely, this pure mHealth innovation mitigates barriers that jeopardise target product profile criteria (e.g., reagents, cold-chain, transport, infrastructure). After CAGE-TB hired personnel, COVID-19 prevented and slowed recruitment (people had limited clinic access, recruitment interrupted by successive COVID-19 waves). Throughout this, CAGE-TB paid personnel and trainees, resulting in severe budget overruns without participant recruitment, and limited trainee progress and site visits. In 4-CAGE-TB we request essential support over two years to accomplish the original scope-of-work, ensure trainees can finish degrees and, due to the longer recruitment period, accommodate critical additional site visits. COVID-19 has only reinforced our premise: it caused TB to increase for the first time in a decade, damaged already weak facility-based triage practices, and accelerated cough classification technologies.