This topic aims to contribute to education, skills development and awareness raising about biodiversity loss, and how this can be addressed, notably with Nature-based Solutions (NBS), in the higher education sector. This is fundamental to further implement and upscale NBS and to mainstreaming biodiversity, ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, climate resilience and pollution reduction, and natural capital in the society and economy. Through education and NBS, the topic contributes to the transformative change necessary to tackle societal challenges, notably addressing the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the EU climate adaptation strategy.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Improved and more coordinated education programmes and increased awareness about biodiversity loss and how this can be addressed together with climate change notably through NBS, in universities and technical schools.
• Increased awareness and development of skills among young people, teachers, professional organisations, on biodiversity, climate change and NBS.
• A transdisciplinary dialogue on inclusive NBS contributing to nature-based thinking and a nature-positive economy, drawing on inclusiveness, the pluralities of values and of knowledge.
• A sustainable recovery of society and the necessary transformative change through biodiversity-friendly actions, professional, collective and personal attitudes.

The European Green Deal communication puts forward a specific action for the Commission to prepare a European competence framework to help develop and assess knowledge, skills and attitudes on climate change and sustainable development. This competence framework should serve as a reference tool for the development and assessment of competences on environmental sustainability. Following the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, the Commission proposed in 2022 a Council Recommendation on encouraging cooperation in learning for environmental sustainability, including biodiversity learning and teaching, which was accompanied by a competence framework.

Education plays indeed an essential role in addressing environmental sustainability by raising awareness and instilling the key competences needed for changing personal behaviours and empowering people to act in their respective communities, especially in the current context of economic recovery, biodiversity crisis and climate change.

Drawing on state-of-the-art science, including the results of EU-funded R&I projects on biodiversity and NBS, the selected project will develop and disseminate concrete guidance for higher education institutions. It will target vocational training, universities and technical schools, for greater involvement with citizens and professional organisations, to mainstream biodiversity and NBS into their learning, teaching and capacity building programmes.

Transdisciplinary collaboration is a fundamental prerequisite for mutual understanding of people working in different sectors when co-creating and co-implementing NBS. There is a need to go beyond tackling challenges individually and perceive the systemic complexity of challenges to be addressed by NBS, by working together across silos, sectors and epistemologies. This paradigm shift in education and skills development will contribute to the necessary transdisciplinary work for tackling both biodiversity and climate crises at different decision-making scales.

The successful proposals should:

• Develop networking and collaboration schemes on higher education curricula and programmes on NBS, as well as researcher mobility initiatives.
• Support and promote the teaching of NBS co-design and co-creation (considering biodiversity and ecosystem services as their fundamental building blocks) as part of high education degrees and further education qualifications. Explore ways of raising awareness and teaching the importance of biodiversity, including genetic, functional and taxonomic diversity, and ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, climate resilience and pollution reduction, especially in those academic fields where this is still greatly lacking (e.g., economics, engineering, etc).
• Encourage holistic approaches centred on biodiversity and the interlinks with climate change; and assess and propose university curricula for NBS-related disciplines, as well as for universities of technology, engineering and other non-biodiversity focused studies that are relevant for NBS design, implementation, monitoring and maintenance.
• Develop collaboration, guidance, benchmarking and exchange of best practices on how the higher education sector can address its impacts on biodiversity when addressing climate change (e.g., in built infrastructure, consumption and other processes), including through NBS.
• Explore innovative ways of involving higher education institutions, their students and staff in tackling the biodiversity crisis, together with the climate crisis (e.g., through documentaries, awards, art interventions, campus improvements).
• Develop NBS capacity building and skills development programmes, in different EU official languages and knowledge transfer mechanisms, in coordination with the relevant professional organisations and building on the work developed on NBS standards and protocols, e.g. by the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe NBS project portfolio, or by the IUCN, so that new technical solutions and standards are used in the NBS supply market.
• In view of a just ecological transition, provide specific NBS vocational training and skills development programmes for the youth, long term unemployed or other social groups in need (including in most deprived regions), co-developed with the relevant professional training and social inclusion institutions.
• Explore innovative ways of ensuring a transdisciplinary dialogue on biodiversity, drivers of biodiversity change, climate and NBS among communities of practice and professional organisations, as well as in universities. In this respect, develop approaches to ensure the quality of transdisciplinary programmes and provide an innovative dialogue space ensuring transdisciplinarity and welcoming the pluralities of values and knowledge, in view of transformative change to tackle both climate and biodiversity crises.
• Outreach and cooperation activities between higher education institutions and citizens, the local and regional communities, businesses, research centres, or museums, supporting challenge-based and experiential learning with real-life applications, promoting nature-based thinking, public debate and a change of behaviour.
• Organise academic residences or summer schools with the relevant partners in Member States, where students can join interdisciplinary and multicultural discussions and witness, in person, the co-creation, co-implementation and co-monitoring of NBS, also in view of emancipatory action for transformative change.

Proposals should address all of the above points.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities. In particular, SSH should be involved in view of ensuring the understanding and inclusion of different values and perceptions of nature, biodiversity and NBS, as well as issues of knowledge creation, identity and culture shaping NBS co-creation and co-implementation.

Proposals should include specific tasks and allocate sufficient resources to collaborate with other projects selected in any other relevant topic, by participating in joint activities, workshops, as well as common communication and dissemination. In particular, the project should build on the existing outputs and create synergies with the relevant projects in Erasmus+, the Horizon Europe Missions (notably “Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030” and "Adaptation to climate Change”), as well as the Horizon 2020 NBS project portfolio and its task forces. The project should also foresee synergies with HORIZON-CL6-2022-BIODIV-01-03: Network for nature: multi-stakeholder dialogue platform to promote nature-based solutions; with the HORIZON-CL6-2021-COMMUNITIES-01-06: Inside and outside: educational innovation with nature-based solutions; and HORIZON-CL5-2023-D1-01-10: Improving the evidence base regarding the impact of sustainability and climate change education and related learning outcomes. Applicants should plan the necessary budget to cover these activities without the prerequisite to define concrete common actions at this stage.

Proposals should ensure that all evidence, information and project outputs are accessible through the Oppla portal (the EU repository for NBS).