Towards Cooperative Sustainability

The inescapable question in the ENVRIplus project is how to sustain all achievements after the end of a collaborative project. Considering that each individual research infrastructure as cooperating in the ENVRIplus project has its own legal entity with dedicated governance and management, the challenge is to agree on modes of cooperation to keep tools and services of common interest up to date and operational. This chapter starts with the views of stakeholders, more specifically the views of scientific bodies, policy bodies, and of the infrastructure managers and operators who have to keep a lot of balls in the air. The sustainability plan has to consider the influences from external developments such as the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), and the emergence of a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The chapter discusses ENVRI strategic views, position, and future challenges.