Assessing the nexus of extraction, production, consumption, trade and behaviour patterns and of climate change action on biodiversity in the context of transformative change

Deadline: Feb 15, 2022  
CALL EXPIRED

In line with the EU biodiversity strategy, a successful proposal must develop knowledge and tools to understand the role of transformative change for biodiversity policy making, address the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, and initiate, accelerate and upscale biodiversity-relevant transformative changes in our society.

Projects must address all of the following outcomes:

• Economically, socially, ethically and institutionally viable and sustainable pathways are designed to minimise biodiversity loss or to enhance biodiversity. These pathways should consider mutually influencing extraction, production, consumption, trade patterns in the medium- and long-term (beyond 2030).
• Improve understanding of the human dimensions impacting biodiversity i.e. ethics, social context, institutions, organisation, behaviour will provide policy makers, industrial stakeholders and civil society the tools needed to reframe their actions, by highlighting the synergies of mainstreaming biodiversity with climate transitions, including on how to avoid or minimise trade-offs.
• Better understand social norms and behaviours, linked to socio-economic values (e.g. ethics, social context of individuals, consumers, institutions, organisations, industry) affecting biodiversity.
• Inform and motivate transformational change through learning, co-creation and dialogue based on case studies. The understanding of the biodiversity inter-dependencies of the SDGs has improved; IPBES and IPCC are strengthened through European research and innovation. Provide a set of approaches, tools and knowledge influence policies at the appropriate level on transformative change for biodiversity – the key elements for this change are delivered by the portfolio of cooperating projects (of which these projects form part).

With focus on assessing the nexus of extraction, production (including processing), consumption, trade and behaviour patterns, including transformative changes for climate change on biodiversity for the EU and Associated Countries, international cooperation in particular with African countries, Brazil, Latin American and Caribbean countries or the Mediterranean region is strongly encouraged.

Proposals should address all the following points:

• Assess how extraction, production, processing, consumption, trade, behaviour patterns, especially linked to primary production (e.g. livestock with/or energy crops, etc. including through tele-coupling from consumption and all along supply chains), integrated food systems, and transformative changes towards climate neutrality, affect biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• Develop pathways together with key industries and key stakeholders to minimise loss of, and enhance biodiversity, whilst increasing the delivery of a wide range of ecosystem services. These industries cover food, feed, fibre, energy production and the wider food chain (related to bio-economy, renewable energies, infrastructure, technologies)^[1], and the deployment of climate mitigation and adaptation measures potentially harmful for biodiversity (e.g. concrete walls in coastal areas, replacement of biodiversity rich ecosystems for energy crops, etc.).
• Identify and address leverage points for transformational change in trade, triggering changes in established and new production and consumption patterns for new business models.
• Highlight the potential of (1) public procurement for delivering biodiversity benefits and (2) nature-based solutions for enabling and accelerating the relevant aspects of transformative change.
• Quantify investments into infrastructure and labour that could be shifted from impacting biodiversity negatively towards benefits for biodiversity, including the anticipation, mitigation and management of social, institutional and economic conflicts this may trigger (or decrease), to achieve a just transition process.
• Understand and engage communities and other social actors, including through citizens science, and initiate behavioural changes leading to production and consumption patterns preventing further biodiversity loss.
• Cooperate with ongoing activities to include biodiversity into integrated assessment models^[2] and analyse the usability of existing and emerging concepts such as ‘Planetary Boundaries’, ‘Doughnut Economy’, ‘Environmental Footprints’.
• Explain the relevance of transition pathways for biodiversity for competitive sustainability, towards a just transition in the full range of SDGs and climate neutrality.

Unsustainable production and consumption, including the role of trade for linking both, are pushing many of the direct drivers of biodiversity loss: land use change, overexploitation, climate change and pollution. Proposals should, based on a clear understanding of these relationships^[3] address how leverage points and levers can be identified and used for generating benefits for biodiversity, e.g. through revision of regulation, standards, funding practices or governance processes.

They should highlight how the primary production sectors (in particular in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, raw material extraction, and also the construction sector) and the related infrastructure and energy provision and use impacts biodiversity directly. They should show effects on the direction of economic development, which leads to lock-in effects, inequalities, lack of capacities of institutions at every level to shift towards sustainable use, the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services. On patterns of consumption, proposals should show how their impacts such as uneven use and exploitation of resources, generation of waste and pollution, value setting, power setting in societies, institutions and financial streams could be addressed in business, institutional and consumer agendas to achieve positive outcomes for biodiversity.

Proposals should assess the cultural diversity that influences these compromises and people’s engagement, and lead the way to further mainstream biodiversity in socio-economic and environmental agendas, from the transformative aspect of changing extraction, production and processing, consumption, trade and behaviour patterns, including on actions for addressing climate change on biodiversity. They should also analyse and test the use of nature-based solutions as tool in this regard. Optimal and cost-effective use of behavioural games, networks of sensors, GIS-mapping, big data and observational programmes such as the European Earth observation programme Copernicus, through the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) as well as citizens' observatories, should be used as appropriate to enable the integration and visualisation of data.

Social innovation is recommended when the solution is at the socio-technical interface and requires social change, new social practices, social ownership or market uptake.

Proposals should build their analysis upon the links between multiple Sustainable Development Goals, to deliver direct and indirect biodiversity benefits, and of the role of biodiversity in reaching the set of Sustainable Development Goals, when related to extraction, production, consumption, trade and behaviour patterns.

Proposals should produce case studies and collect good and bad examples that could inform these transformations and inform and inspire transformative change through learning, co-creation and dialogue.

Proposals should include specific tasks and ensure sufficient resources to develop joint deliverables (e.g. activities, workshops, as well as joint communication and dissemination) with all projects on transformative change related to biodiversity. This concerns projects funded under this destination, or under calls included in Destination ‘Fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food systems from primary production to consumption’ related to transformational change (Fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food systems from primary production to consumption) that aim to deliver various co-benefits, including on the reduction of biodiversity loss. Projects should use existing platforms and information sharing mechanisms relevant for transformational change and on biodiversity knowledge^[4]. Cooperation and possibly synergies with relevant topics in Cluster 5 should be explored and established as relevant. Furthermore, cooperation is expected with the European partnership on biodiversity and with the Science Service^.

Proposals should show how their results might provide timely information for major science-policy bodies such as the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as the Convention on Biological Diversity on project outcomes. Cooperation is requested with projects under ‘HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-20: Support to processes triggered by IPBES and IPCC’ and ‘HORIZON-CL6-2022-BIODIV-01-10: Cooperation with the Convention on Biological Diversity’.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of social science and humanities disciplines.

Social Innovation
EOSC and FAIR data
Africa
Socio-economic science and humanities
Societal Engagement

[1]Based on the development of sustainable pathways as issued by projects such as CD-LINKS and EUCalc.

[2]Such as activities stemming from CL5-D1-CSR-07-2021/2, CL5-D1-CSR-09-2021/2 and CL5-D1-CSR-15-2021/2

[3]As provided in IPBES (2018, 2019), IPCC (2019), EKLIPSE and EC (2020), GBO-5 (2020), FP7 and H2020 projects on climate and urban transitions. See also http://www.biodiversitybarometer.org/

[4]BISE, Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity, BiodivERsA, Oppla, NetworkNature and their joint work streams