Policy mixes, governance (including financing) and decision-making tools for transformative action on biodiversity

Topic description

ExpectedOutcome:

In line with the EU biodiversity strategy, successful proposals will 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 should address all following outcomes:

• Tools promoting the benefits of biodiversity are taken up by policy makers, industries, civil society organisations including NGOs, financing entities, businesses and retailers. These solutions can include a stocktaking of good practice (in addition to natural capital accounting and reporting), standards, agreements, charters, commitments, regulations, financing streams (positive incentives vs harmful subsidies), engaging society and incorporating lifelong learning.
• Increased use and mainstreaming of ‘green over grey’ approaches, in particular by adopting nature-based solutions on land and at sea, in line with the Green Deal’s ‘do no significant harm’ principle.
• Ways to facilitate the application of systemic, sustainable policy mixes and governance approaches, based on a range of policy tools, economic instruments or regulations.
• Developing and testing approaches on (1) mitigating existing and future risks to biodiversity and on (2) better reflecting how biodiversity loss affects company business models, value chains, profitability and long-term prospects, so that methods and tools can be integrated into decisions, while factoring in societal and democratic processes (citizen engagement, political campaigns, science denialism).
• Making options available on how to implement in practice the renewed sustainable finance strategy for the financial system to generate a positive impact on biodiversity.
• Promoting tax systems and pricing that reflect environmental costs, including biodiversity loss, to shift the tax burden from labour to pollution, and to tackle the issue of under-priced resources and other environmental externalities.
• Making available case studies on what transformational change^[1] means in practice.
• Improving the understanding of the biodiversity inter-dependencies of the SDGs. Supporting IPBES and IPCC work by providing input from European research and innovation. Providing approaches, tools and knowledge influence policies at the right level on transformative change for biodiversity. The key elements for this change will be delivered by the broader portfolio of collaborative projects (of which these projects developing the toolbox for transformative changes with a positive effect on biodiversity, providing policy mixes, science-policy communication, governance and decision-making tools form part).

Policy mixes, governance (including financing) and decision-making tools to achieve the necessary ecological, climate, economic and social transition for biodiversity are not yet widely available, and must be developed. Proposals should take up the work of the renewed sustainable finance strategy which will help ensure that the financial system contributes to mitigating existing and future risks to biodiversity.

Proposals should look at how to further mainstream biodiversity into policy making, science, and governance (including financing) to achieve transformative action within and beyond socio-economic, climate and environmental agendas.

Proposals should build their analysis on the synergies of multiple Sustainable Development Goals, to deliver direct and indirect biodiversity benefits, and on the role of biodiversity in reaching the set of Sustainable Development Goals.

Proposals should produce case studies and a collection of good and failed examples of developing and implementing policy tools, best practices and instruments, which could feed into the just transformation process and inform and inspire transformative change through learning, co-creation and dialogue.

Proposals should include specific tasks and allocate sufficient resources to develop joint deliverables (e.g. activities, workshops, joint communication and dissemination) with all projects on transformative change related to biodiversity funded under this destination. They should use existing platforms and information sharing mechanisms relevant for transformational change and on biodiversity knowledge^[2]. Projects are expected to cooperate with the European partnership on biodiversity (HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-02-01) and the Science Service (HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-19). Proposals should show how their results and outcomes could provide timely information for major science-policy bodies such as the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Convention on Biological Diversity^[3].

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

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

[1]Referring to, and critically assessing, the understanding of transformative change in IPBES and GBO-5, EEA and based on existing tools such as https://www.sustainable-prosperity.eu/ or workshops https://ec.europa.eu/info/events/workshop-transformative-change-global-post-2020-biodiversity-framework-2020-mar-18_en

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

[3]In particular the policy support function of IPBES, https://ipbes.net/policy-support. Projects are requested to cooperate with projects ‘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’.