Demonstration cases
The project will use ongoing processes of Science-Policy Interfaces, across Europe and beyond, as demonstration cases to address the most urgent needs identified for the Science Service for Biodiversity. These demonstration cases are directly related to the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
The demonstration cases will showcase real-life actions and processes, and will demonstrate different processes already in place in various biodiversity management and governance contexts. They will range from marine bio-economy to forestry, from aquaculture to pollination and from mountain tourism to urban green infrastructure. The cases will show how governance can enhance science-based transformative change and will support implementing, monitoring, reporting and reviewing the EU’s biodiversity strategy.
Seven cases have already been selected based on their relevance to the EU’s biodiversity strategy:
Pollination
Pollinators and pollination services support agriculture and provide other benefits to ecosystems and people, yet they are threatened by multiple pressures caused by human activities. This DC will mobilise actionable knowledge from the scientific and end-user community to link to EU policy objectives and improve the mainstreaming of pollinators and pollination across sectors.
Nature-based solutions
Nature-based solutions are key actions to achieve the ambitious goals of the EU BDS2030, especially in urban areas where the newly introduced Urban Nature Plans should coordinate their implementation. By collaborating with ongoing initiatives to mobilize, collect, and synthesize knowledge around urban nature-based solutions, the DC contributes to identify, and fill, existing knowledge and capacity gaps, for supporting both planning processes at the local level, and EU-wide monitoring.
Freshwater
The Freshwater DC has the main goal to provide a research-based assessment of the state of freshwater biodiversity management in the EU, its practical and policy implications.
It will also facilitate collaborations with relevant stakeholders in the field.
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Multifunctional landscapes
Landscapes are dynamic and multifunctional where . Balancing the multiple values, interests of actors, sectoral policy objectives is crucial for the holistic preservation of sustainable landscapes. This DC takes a multifunctional and pluralistic ‘scape’ approach to ensure land degradation neutrality by protecting and restoring a coherent network of natural areas, as well as agricultural and forest ecosystems.
Marine
The Marine DC focuses on policy commitments of the Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and the Marine Action plan, for example to 1) legally protect at least 30% of its seas and strictly protect at least a third of the EU’s protected areas as well as to 2) substantially reduce the negative impacts of fisheries on sensitive marine habitats and species.
The marine DC has build its topical network and is now focusing on three main functions, capacity building, answering requests & feedback into policy frameworks
Monitoring and Scenarios
This DC will strengthen existing initiatives, projects, networks and institutions at EU level to map the availability of spatio-temporally explicit indicators developed and used to monitor the state of biodiversity and the impact of anthropogenic pressures, including land-use change, on biodiversity. Moreover, as part of the overarching objective of DC, a subgroup will focus on a specific case demonstrator to evaluate the efficacy of the entire process. This demonstrator will serve as a rapid test scenario, assessing the effectiveness of existing big data resources in biodiversity analysis at the EU level.
Transformative change
Transformative change represents a profound shift from current societal modes of production and consumption, lifestyles, economies and markets, governance and paradigms. It has been widely recognised as critical to safeguarding life on Earth. This Transformative Change DC focuses on mobilising knowledge, data and collective learning that contributes to transformative change processes and solutions that address indirect drivers of biodiversity loss and multiple sustainability issues. It further aims to leverage the amplification and scaling up potential of a ‘network-of-networks’ approach at science policy society interfaces. It will do this by expandinging and engageengaging existing networks, such the transformative change cluster of the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency, the Eklipse transformative change community, and several transition research communities. The DC will consider various root causes and transformative pathways for societal reorganisation. One of the particular interests of the DC is to enable discussions on transforming social and economic systems beyond the imperative of continuous growth.