ExpectedOutcome:
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:
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:
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).