Seven networks have already been selected based on their relevance to the EU’s biodiversity strategy:
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 KEN 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 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 KEN contributes to identify, and fill, existing knowledge and capacity gaps, for supporting both planning processes at the local level, and EU-wide monitoring.
The Freshwater KEN 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.
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 KEN 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.
The Marine KEN 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 KEN has build its topical network and is now focusing on three main functions, capacity building, answering requests & feedback into policy frameworks
This KEN 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 KEN, 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 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 KEN 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 KEN will consider various root causes and transformative pathways for societal reorganisation. One of the particular interests of the KEN is to enable discussions on transforming social and economic systems beyond the imperative of continuous growth.