GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

The successful proposals should:

• Develop networking and collaboration schemes on higher education curricula and programmes on NBS, as well as researcher mobility initiatives.
• Support and promote the teaching of NBS co-design and co-creation (considering biodiversity and ecosystem services as their fundamental building blocks) as part of high education degrees and further education qualifications. Explore ways of raising awareness and teaching the importance of biodiversity, including genetic, functional and taxonomic diversity, and ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, climate resilience and pollution reduction, especially in those academic fields where this is still greatly lacking (e.g., economics, engineering, etc).
• Encourage holistic approaches centred on biodiversity and the interlinks with climate change; and assess and propose university curricula for NBS-related disciplines, as well as for universities of technology, engineering and other non-biodiversity focused studies that are relevant for NBS design, implementation, monitoring and maintenance.
• Develop collaboration, guidance, benchmarking and exchange of best practices on how the higher education sector can address its impacts on biodiversity when addressing climate change (e.g., in built infrastructure, consumption and other processes), including through NBS.
• Explore innovative ways of involving higher education institutions, their students and staff in tackling the biodiversity crisis, together with the climate crisis (e.g., through documentaries, awards, art interventions, campus improvements).
• Develop NBS capacity building and skills development programmes, in different EU official languages and knowledge transfer mechanisms, in coordination with the relevant professional organisations and building on the work developed on NBS standards and protocols, e.g. by the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe NBS project portfolio, or by the IUCN, so that new technical solutions and standards are used in the NBS supply market.
• In view of a just ecological transition, provide specific NBS vocational training and skills development programmes for the youth, long term unemployed or other social groups in need (including in most deprived regions), co-developed with the relevant professional training and social inclusion institutions.
• Explore innovative ways of ensuring a transdisciplinary dialogue on biodiversity, drivers of biodiversity change, climate and NBS among communities of practice and professional organisations, as well as in universities. In this respect, develop approaches to ensure the quality of transdisciplinary programmes and provide an innovative dialogue space ensuring transdisciplinarity and welcoming the pluralities of values and knowledge, in view of transformative change to tackle both climate and biodiversity crises.
• Outreach and cooperation activities between higher education institutions and citizens, the local and regional communities, businesses, research centres, or museums, supporting challenge-based and experiential learning with real-life applications, promoting nature-based thinking, public debate and a change of behaviour.
• Organise academic residences or summer schools with the relevant partners in Member States, where students can join interdisciplinary and multicultural discussions and witness, in person, the co-creation, co-implementation and co-monitoring of NBS, also in view of emancipatory action for transformative change.