According to the last IPCC report, the global energy system remains the largest source of CO2 emissions. Addressing Climate Change (CC) requires for the energy sector to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. In West Africa (WA), this challenge also meets the issue of energy access for a majority of the populations (SDG 7 & 12). Net zero strategies will necessarily be part of a sustainable energy development that looks for balancing the population need for energy and the corresponding negative impacts on local and global social-ecosystems (SDG 13). Energy system modelling should help decision makers to determine potential pathways for the net zero energy mix in the region, from strategy (decentralization vs. centralization) to the type of low-carbon energy resources to be implemented. At the moment, energy models in WA need 1) better contextualization regarding energy access, in particular by taking into account decentralized options, 2) enhanced integration across the multiple dimensions of the energy system equilibrium between energy supply and energy demand at the national scale, and 3) taking into consideration the net zero agenda through innovative system configurations, economic futures and mitigation options. In order to tackle this challenge, NZEMIX will especially focus on the interconnectedness between existing detailed models of energy supply (renewable, non-renewable), end-using sectors (agriculture, transport, residential, etc.) and social-environmental drivers (CC, population growth, urbanization) at sub-national and national scale. First, through interdisciplinary literature review and detailed analysis of pre-selected models, it will determine a set of modelling tools that could be interconnected between them (WP1). An Open-Source modelling framework will then be developed based on relevant models belonging to this set, combining a network of sectoral models and a social-environmental forcing framework, the latter being designed to take into consideration the impact of the evolution of critical social and environmental parameters over time on the system (WP2). The models of this framework will be incrementally interconnected through soft-linking or hard-linking, in order to facilitate contextualization, provide knowledge about specific interactions, and ensure progressive handling of increasing complexity and model internal assumptions. Those models will then be contextualized with respect to own WA issues, in particular the dichotomy between centralized and decentralized energy supply. This modelling framework will eventually be applied to co-construct net-zero scenarios in WA countries under study (Senegal, Niger, Côte d'Ivoire) in order to assess strategies and options towards a net-zero energy system (WP3). Ultimately, multidimensional knowledge will be co-constructed for the whole region through aggregation of these sub-national and national scenarios elaborated in different social-environmental contexts. This knowledge will be adapted for dissemination towards policy makers (policy briefs) and towards local populations through interactive communication supports (online resource, TV & radio program, short movies, etc.), in particular to understand how their own aspirations and energy needs may match the future shift of the energy system towards more sustainability.

The Espace-Dev laboratory of the University of Guiana wishes to set up a Twinning project with three objectives: to increase skills in the intelligent management of the solar resource using artificial intelligence, to build a European scientific network and to improve support for the management of European projects. French Guiana, by its geographical location has a strong solar potential. Several aspects are essential for the proper management of this potential: estimation of sunshine, prediction of the availability of the resource, integration of the energy produced into the energy distribution system, etc. The research team has understood the interest of exploiting this resource, particularly in order to increase the energy transition and the energy independence of the territory. Thus, research is conducted in the laboratory not only on the estimation of irradiance from satellite images, which allow to obtain the irradiance at any location covered by the satellite, but also on the prediction of irradiance and energy production of photovoltaic power plants using methods of artificial intelligence. The setting up of a Twinning project will enable the university to network with leading European institutions. Three European institutions have been targeted for their concordance with the laboratory's project but also for their complementarity. The research center for energy, environment and technology, a research organization in Spain, will provide expertise in the estimation of irradiance from satellite images and the processing of time series. The University of Freiburg will be involved in the field of artificial intelligence. The institute of systems engineering and informatics: research and development in Lisbon with whom the collaboration will focus on the prediction of the production of photovoltaic plants. The networking with these institutions will allow the team to increase its skills in the above-mentioned fields. This network will help the research team to improve its skills in the selected themes and to increase its competitiveness on the European level. In addition, this project will allow the development of research management skills within the newly created European project support unit within the university. In addition, this project will enable the development of research management skills within the university's emerging European project support unit. The Twinning project will have scientific impacts at the local and regional level. The recognition of the laboratory by companies, whose field of action is solar energy, will allow the construction of CIFRE theses and expert missions. Moreover, the territory will radiate on the Guiana Shield and will become a reference in the themes addressed by the project.

With the increase in the severity and occurrence of natural disasters in recent years over West Africa, a better prediction of their impacts is of key challenge. This project aims to develop a forecast model on weather-related risk on population over high vulnerable cities: Abidjan, Dakar, Ouagadougou and Niamey. It will focus on intense hydro-meteorological events, responsible of the largest number of fatalities over West Africa, heat waves and dust storms, risk factors for bacterial meningitis. To achieve that goal, optimizing and extracting robust information from big datasets derived from reanalysis and probabilistic forecast models are necessary. The objectives are to identify the high impacting hazard events thanks to field investigations on impacts and to extract robust and meaningful early warning indices of weather-related risks from numerical models. This project is innovative in assessing the predictability of the risks thanks to tailoring and multi-disciplinary approaches.

ARTDECO gathers 4 research teams and one social enterprise around participatory research in the field of Sustainability Science, by looking more particularly at the processes involved in crafting sustainable materials. This project will establish a framework for implementing a low-tech citizen lab in a follow-up project. This lab, established in Alsace region, will gather local stakeholders and scientific partners, and will aim at transforming local residual organic resources (from the agriculture or food processing sectors) into materials and objects for local use. The main objective is to understand how a low-tech process, regarded as virtuous per se, can lead towards a sustainable transition of the usages and practices, at the territorial scale and with respect to the local context. In order to foster the emergence of this low-tech citizen lab, ARTDECO will rely upon three main phases : - The analysis of how rooted in the territory of interest technical solutions for transformation of organic waste and co-products into materials might be; - Lab trials for low-tech techniques adapted to the territory in cooperation with local stakeholders and know-how; - Formalizing a framework for the citizen lab, with recommendations for governance and knowledge management in contact with the territorial context and similar initiatives in other territories. The model eventually co-constructed could be replicated and applied to other territories and/or technical solutions for other sectors (food, energy, habitat, mobility, etc.)

In French Guiana (FG), the exposure of populations living along rivers and coastal areas to trace metals and metalloids (TMs) is a major concern for public health organizations. Today, the origin of these exposures still remains poorly understood. The high levels of potentially toxic TMs (e.g., Hg, Pb, As) in lateritic covers (laterite and soil) result from a natural accumulation over millions of years. This equilibrium is today disturbed on the one hand, by climatic forcing (landslides, tropical storms...), but above all by anthropogenic activities, first of all legal or illegal gold mining, which induced pollution (notably mercury) constitutes a major challenge for this territory. The reworking and erosion (natural or not) of lateritic covers favor the transfer of particles enriched in TM into the Guyanese hydrosystems. The TMs are then subjected to numerous biogeochemical transformations that can modify their speciation towards toxic and/or bioaccumulative forms in the trophic chains. On the other hand, the addition of TMs (Pb and Hg) from anthropogenic activities (gold mining, agriculture, hunting...) to a naturally high geochemical background exacerbates the risks of exposure of populations. The ECLAT project federates 6 laboratories and universities located in French Guiana and in mainland France to document the biogeochemical cycles of TMs, and to provide societal and public health responses to this problem in French Guiana. Through a transdisciplinary approach (geosciences and social sciences), the project will focus on understanding the processes of accumulation, transfer, and fate of TMs from lateritic covers to the large Guyanese rivers. The project will be carried out on two hydrosystems; the Maroni and the Mana, which are contrasted by their water flows and the quality of their waters due to a very different density of population and gold mining activity on their shores. First, the socio-environmental and economic dynamics (gold mining, land use...) of the two watersheds will be analyzed on the basis of historical archives. These results will allow to evaluate, reconstruct and compare the spatiotemporal evolution of TM fluxes and anthropogenic pressure over the last two centuries. In parallel, the mineralogical, geochemical and geochronological study of current lateritic covers will allow to characterize the processes and dynamics of geogenic and anthropogenic TMs accumulation on time scales ranging from century to million years. Finally, the reactivity of mineral and/or organic carrier phases of TMs (once remobilized in hydrosystems) will be studied during suspended transport and during transient deposition events (from the flood to the seasonal scale) to document the pathway and fate of these contaminants. The use of innovative methodologies (field and laboratory), various and complementary scopes and tools (mineralogy, geochronology and elemental and isotopic geochemistry) will allow the identification of sources and the characterization of biogeochemical processes involved in TM dynamics. This project will bring a new vision of this complex socio-ecosystem, and answers to the society on the risks of exposure to TM. The dissemination of knowledge (workshop, teaching, dissemination via GIS, and popularization of results) to the University of French Guiana, state agencies and the general public will allow the Guyanese population to access qualitative and quantitative information on the impact of (il)legal mines and on the exposure of populations over time. The ECLAT project will therefore allow for better management of the environment and human health and increase the development of education on this issue.