European Partnership Rescuing Biodiversity To Safeguard Life On Earth

Expected Outcome:

The partnership is expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

In line with the European Green Deal and the Convention on Biological Diversity, this partnership will contribute to the objectives and targets of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 under the overarching objective that, by 2030, biodiversity in Europe is back on the path to recovery. A successful proposal will contribute to the EU Green Deal priorities, the Birds and Habitats Directives, and to EU climate and agricultural policies. It will help connect biodiversity research across Europe, supporting and raising the ambition of national, EU and international environmental policies and conventions^[1]. The expected outcomes of the topic will also contribute to other impacts of Destination ‘Biodiversity and ecosystem services’, as well as to the Commission priority 'A stronger Europe in the world', and to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13, 14, 15, 17.

• Biodiversity research and environmental policy institutions build up coherent initiatives through a co-funded European partnership.
• National/local and EU research & innovation programmes share information between programmes and with environmental ministries and agencies, combining in-cash and in-kind resources. EU and national/regional biodiversity research agendas from EU Member States and associated countries- are complementary; a long-term pan-European strategic research agenda is co-created and implemented.
• Biodiversity monitoring in Europe is structured in the form of a network of coordinated observatories providing accessible knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services to users via the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity.
• The partnership increases the relevance, impact and visibility of R&I and European leadership in tackling the biodiversity crisis.
• Biodiversity is mainstreamed across sectors and policies across Europe by using tools such as natural capital accounting and by rolling out nature-based solutions, including traditional and new technologies, which provide multifunctional and resilient solutions to complex societal challenges.

Scope:

The European partnership on biodiversity ‘Rescuing biodiversity to safeguard life on Earth’ is one of the actions included in the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. It should coordinate research programmes between EU and its Member States and associated countries and trigger combined action. For the first time, it should mobilise environmental authorities as key partners in carrying out biodiversity research and innovation, along with ministries of research, funding agencies, and environmental protection agencies. The partnership’s co-created strategic research and innovation agenda for seven years should include calls for research projects, biodiversity- and ecosystems monitoring and science-based policy advisory activities.

The partnership and its members should be committed to the Global 2050 Vision of ‘Living in harmony with nature’ adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity - by 2050, biodiversity and its benefits to people should be protected, valued and restored. The long-term goals in the zero-draft of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, adding up to this 2050 Vision include:

• net zero ecosystem loss by 2030, with a decreased risk of species extinction risks decreasing, and an increase in abundance of endangered species and their genetic diversity;
• rolling out of nature-based solutions at sufficient scale to contribute to people’s and environmental needs across Europe;
• good biodiversity status fully acknowledged as one of the basis for sustainable development and a green economy, and EU/AC leadership is recognised in this context.

To reach these long-term goals, the Biodiversity Partnership should support the contribution of R&I to the EU biodiversity strategy to 2030 to enable transformative change that puts biodiversity on the path to recovery by 2030, for the benefit of the climate and people.

The partnership should aim to achieve five overarching objectives:

1. Produce actionable knowledge to tackle both the direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss; produce knowledge on biodiversity status, trends and dynamics, and in integrating drivers, pressures, impacts and responses; produce knowledge on the trade-offs and synergies between multiple drivers of biodiversity change; and an assessment of new tools and approaches to biodiversity/ecosystem conservation and restoration;
2. Expand and improve the evidence base, accelerate the development and wide deployment of nature-based solutions to meet societal challenges across Europe in a sustainable and resilient way, contributing to protecting biodiversity while tackling multiple challenges such as the climate crisis while improving food and nutrition security, the water supply, addressing flooding and water scarcity, and tackling other societal priorities.
3. Making the business case for the conservation and restoration of ecosystems, by contributing science-based methodologies to account for and possibly value ecosystem services and the natural capital, and to assess the dependency and impact of businesses on biodiversity.
4. Improved monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem services across Europe (status and trends), building on existing national/regional monitoring schemes, building new capacity for setting up new schemes, promoting new and efficient technologies and experience from processes related to mapping and assessing ecosystems and their services (MAES) with regard to enhancing and standardising tools for mapping and assessment.
5. Science-based support for EU, Member States and associated countries policy-making, including for strengthening and implementing environmental policies and laws, and improving cross-sectoral links synergies with other European sectoral policies. More generally, R&I programmes should be better linked to the policy arena, providing greater input to policy making and improving the assessment of policy efficiency. The European partnership for biodiversity should be implemented through a joint programme of activities ranging from research to coordination and networking, including training, demonstration and dissemination, to be structured along the following main work streams:
6. Actions to promote and support R&I programs and projects across the European Research Area, including launching ambitious joint calls to fund transnational R&I projects and run mobility schemes, for example for young scientists or between academia and business;
7. Actions to build R&I capacity and increase the impact of R&I programmes and projects, including science-based policy support;
8. Actions to support, harmonise and carry out biodiversity monitoring;
9. Measures to improve the uptake, demonstration and rollout of solutions to tackle the above-mentioned objectives of the partnership;
10. Measures to enhance the excellence, visibility and impact of European R&I at international level.
11. Measures to regularly update the partnership vision and strategy.

The composition of the partnership should include at least a geographically representative distribution of national and regional research and innovation authorities and funding agencies, environmental authorities, and environmental agencies from EU Member States, associated countries and their regions. The number of partners and their contribution should be sufficient to attain a critical mass in the field. Partners are expected to provide financial and/or in-kind contribution, in line with the level of ambition of the proposed measures. The partnership should be open to including new partners over the lifetime of the partnership. Its governance should create a clear and transparent process for engaging with a broad range of stakeholders, together with the full members of the partnership, to ensure that the work strategically covers a wide range of views in the field of biodiversity, nature-based solutions and ecosystem services throughout the lifetime of the partnership. To ensure that all work streams are coherent and complementary, and to leverage knowledge investment potential, the partnership is expected to foster close cooperation and synergies with the Horizon Missions on Soils; Ocean, seas and waters; Climate Adaptation and Cities; and with the future European Partnerships Agroecology, Urban Transitions, Agriculture of Data, Water, Blue Economy, and Circular/Bio-based economy. The partnership should collaborate closely with the EC ‘Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity’^[2] recently launched by the EC to build the expertise in Europe to inform, track and assess progress in implementing the EU 2030 biodiversity strategy and to underpin further biodiversity policy developments. It should also cooperate with the Science Service project under Horizon Europe^[3], which is embedded into the EC ‘Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity’ and aims to facilitate the inclusion of research results into action to implement biodiversity policies.

The partnership should allocate resources to cooperate with existing projects, initiatives, platforms, science-policy interfaces, institutional processes at EU level, and at other levels where relevant to the partnership’s goals. Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing joint calls for transnational proposals that provide grants to third parties.

Applicants are expected to describe in detail how they would carry out this collaborative work in practice. Given the global dimension of biodiversity, membership and other modalities of participation from institutions in non-EU countries is encouraged. In particular, the participation of legal entities from international countries and/or regions including those not automatically eligible for funding is encouraged in the joint calls.

Proposals should pool the necessary financial resources from participating national (or regional) research programmes with a view to implementing joint calls for transnational proposals that provide grants to third parties.

Financial support provided by the participants to third parties is one of the primary channels under this action to enable the partnership to achieve its objectives. The maximum amount to be granted to each third party is EUR 7 million for the whole duration of Horizon Europe. It is expected that the partnership organises joint calls on an annual base from 2022-2027 and therefore it should factor ample time to run the co-funded projects.

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

The Commission envisages to include new actions in future work programme(s) to continue providing support to the partnership for the duration of Horizon Europe.

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[1] In particular, the UN Convention on Biodiversity, and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030

[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] To be funded through the topic HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-19