The project is expected to connect up biodiversity research across Europe, supporting and enhancing the ambition of national, European and international environmental policies and conventions.

Contributing to the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, the aim of this topic is to give support for developing and implementing this and other EU policies by generating knowledge generation, guiding biodiversity governance and ecosystem monitoring, and implementing the EU Green Deal. It supports the development of a long-term strategic research agenda for biodiversity.

The project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• a single entry point linking European research and biodiversity policymaking that will be embedded in the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD) as ‘scientific pillar’, which will collect and organise knowledge resulting from science that is relevant for implementing the EU biodiversity strategy and other relevant EU policies, in particular knowledge generated from EU-funded R&I projects, relevant infrastructures and platforms.
• feeding input into the monitoring, reporting and review mechanism of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 with relevant research-based assessments and options that can feed into any short- and medium-term corrective action necessary (“ratcheting up”).
• full integration into, and support to the governance framework of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 to steer implementation of the commitments on biodiversity agreed at national, European or international level.
• setting up a functional, early delivering Science Service at EU level, also involving associated countries where appropriate, to bolster at global level the EU’s ambitions for research into biodiversity-relevant areas.

The EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 announced a science policy mechanism for research-based options to ratchet up the implementation of commitments made on biodiversity. This topic is to provide a Science Service as a dedicated tool to regularly integrate science into EU biodiversity policy-making in terms of what is needed to implement the strategy. It should bridge the continued and critical gap on knowledge sharing and should complement other EU-funded initiatives^[1]. It should feed into the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity^[2]. At the same time, it should provide a single-entry point linking RTD funded research and innovation with biodiversity policymaking via the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity. Further, the Science Service might act as a pilot on how any science component could work in practice in the context of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. With this work, Europe could test and lead the way on how to make such an instrument, triggering research-based options to implement the biodiversity strategy, work in practice.

The objective is to reformat and connect research results to the needs of environmental policy in a targeted dialogue between science and policy makers. This should include science resulting from the latest EU R&I activities and infrastructures, shape future R&I and be embedded in the long-term strategic research agenda on biodiversity. Proposals should develop a Science Service mechanism that covers all of the following aspects:

1. Inspired by IPBES functions, it should provide relevant policy tools (e.g. indicators), generate knowledge to fill gaps, build capacity within and beyond the EU, and contribute to science-based assessments for the EU decision-making process.
2. All work carried out by the Science Service should be defined under strong and clear governance arrangements, including how to prioritise requests, and designed to support implementing, monitoring, reporting and reviewing the EU biodiversity strategy. The governance should be led by DG RTD, in cooperation with DG ENV, DG JRC and the EEA, and ideally involve the Environmental Knowledge Community (EKC)^[3] and factor in its needs and requests.
3. The Science Service should feed into the EC Knowledge Centre on Biodiversity^[4] and support it to direct knowledge gaps and policy questions to science, synthesize knowledge, and communicate emerging issues identified by science to decision-makers in policy, business, NGOs, land users or site managers. The Science Service should also be involved and feed knowledge into strategic dialogues and fora organised by the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity, as well as in expert meetings requested by the EKC. The Knowledge Centre on Biodiversity should manage exchanges from policy to science and vice-versa, and the Science Service constitutes its primary tool for making scientific information accessible to policy makers.
4. Member States, and where appropriate associated countries, civil society and the Mission Boards under Horizon Europe, may also ask the Science Service to cover specific topics. The process of directing requests for contents and format to the Science Service, and how to provide information, is to be agreed with the relevant EU services, including with the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity.
5. The Science Service should use the tools and results funded by the EU research framework programmes^[5], by other sources of European funding^[6], and additional relevant sources^[7], which it should help integrate into the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity. It should cooperate with the European partnership on biodiversity^[8].
6. The Science Service should take up requests from biodiversity policy-making to the Biodiversity Partnership, and to the biodiversity-relevant missions in Horizon Europe. This would be orchestrated in collaboration with the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity; such as via its user forum function. The Science service should also organise ad-hoc high-level expert advice to the European Commission’s high-level decision-makers on specific issues related to biodiversity.
7. The work of the Science Service should be presented and discussed at expert or working groups according to the governance framework of the EU biodiversity strategy, and should support European research policy related to biodiversity. It should also act as a ‘back office’ for organising the cooperation of biodiversity-relevant research projects – in thematic clusters where appropriate – under Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020, such as yearly meetings or through common products, in collaboration with the Executive Agency. This would be done in collaboration with the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity.
8. The Science Service should support the orchestration of current and future knowledge mechanisms to implement the long-term European strategic biodiversity research agenda, including work under the Biodiversity Partnership and other biodiversity-relevant partnerships; such as EKLIPSE, Oppla, NetworkNature, the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity^[2] and other biodiversity-relevant science advisory mechanisms. It should also describe the global aspects of its services in the mid-term planning.
9. Proposals should indicate what specific results the Science Service should initially deliver by the end of year one. This pilot exercise should be relevant to and fit the timeframe set out in the policy agenda of the EU biodiversity strategy, and optionally, for the global biodiversity agenda. Throughout the duration of the project, the following annual work plans should be aligned to the long-term strategic research agenda (in preparation - See EU biodiversity strategy).
10. The Service should then deliver, communicate and disseminate regular (e.g. half-yearly) input in the form of options and scenarios for implementing the biodiversity strategy for 2030 and beyond. The aim must be to trigger response from those entities responsible for implementing the strategy (e.g. EU services, national and local authorities, business, civil society and the environmental knowledge community in general).
11. It should provide, on request of its governance bodies, summaries, knowledge synthesis, factsheets or briefs and reviews of biodiversity research outputs and tools usable for implementing and ratcheting up the EU biodiversity strategy, in language and format tailored to the target users, such as:
    1. foresight, analysis of new and emerging topics,
    2. indicators and valuation methods,
    3. analysis of the behavioural, institutional and bio-physical factors for biodiversity conservation and restoration, including on tipping points and planetary boundaries,
    4. projections/forecasts, integrated models, scenarios and pathways that integrate socio-economic and cultural values, that avoid lock-in pathways, and that provide incentives for large-scale demonstration of nature-based solutions and testing of governance approaches, financing and business models to enable transformative change,
    5. requests to existing science-policy services (such as EKLIPSE and Oppla) in collaboration with the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity for dedicated biodiversity-relevant science-policy tasks that those services can deliver, and that the Science Service channels into the biodiversity governance framework,
    6. support for science-based decision-making for biodiversity against disinformation campaigns; and
    7. testing new ways of communicating biodiversity-related science to non-scientific audiences.
12. Proposals should describe how the Science Service can deliver its work in line with the timeframe for policy processes and to implement the EU biodiversity strategy. They should explain how they have sufficient resources, and a flexible, lean mechanism following the principles of credibility, relevance and legitimacy, including whether internal assessments or peer reviews on its outputs are planned.
13. Proposals should evaluate the experience of comparable instruments covering some of the actions or procedures that the Science Service should set up^[10], focused on biodiversity but also in other fields, and under the governance framework of the EU biodiversity strategy.
14. The project should draw up a plan on how to finance and govern the activities of this kick-starting service over the medium- and long-term and seek to secure commitments to allow the work of the Science Service to continue after the funding of this topic ends, i.e. before 2027.

Proposals should strike an appropriate geographical balance across Europe.

This topic should involve contributions from the sciences and humanities disciplines.

[1] Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity, Biodiversity Partnership, Horizon Europe’s large-scale missions, further projects funded by R&I within this work programme.

[2] The EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD) is an action of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. It aims to enhance the knowledge base, facilitate its sharing and foster cross-sectorial policy dialogue for EU policy making in biodiversity and related fields. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/biodiversity_en.

[3] The Environmental Knowledge Community (EKC) is a collaboration between different services of the European Commission (EC) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) to exploit new ways of creating and exchanging knowledge that is related to environmental policy-making.

[4]

[5] e.g. directly EU-funded or co-funded projects by Joint Programming Initiatives, ERA-Nets, the European partnership on biodiversity

[6] Such as funding under the Multi-annual financial framework (e.g. LIFE or COST, regional and cohesion, agricultural and rural development, fisheries and maritime, climate, social, just transition funding, neighbourhood, international cooperation), or under the Recovery Fund.

[7] This covers e.g. relevant ESFRI's research infrastructures and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) national nodes, biodiversity-relevant knowledge and data from citizen science, businesses, NGO, earth observation (linked to Galileo and Copernicus), governance processes, in order to increase the value and return-on-investment.

[8] https://www.biodiversa.org/1759

[9] The EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD) is an action of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. It aims to enhance the knowledge base, facilitate its sharing and foster cross-sectorial policy dialogue for EU policy making in biodiversity and related fields. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/biodiversity_en.

[10] such as IPBES, IPCC, EEA (the European Environment Agency), SCAR (Standing Committee on Agricultural Research), EPBRS (European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy), SfEP (Science for Environment Policy), SAM (the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism), EPRS (European Parliamentary Research Service) or the UK’s Climate Change Committee.