GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should address all the following points:

• Assess how extraction, production, processing, consumption, trade, behaviour patterns, especially linked to primary production (e.g. livestock with/or energy crops, etc. including through tele-coupling from consumption and all along supply chains), integrated food systems, and transformative changes towards climate neutrality, affect biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• Develop pathways together with key industries and key stakeholders to minimise loss of, and enhance biodiversity, whilst increasing the delivery of a wide range of ecosystem services. These industries cover food, feed, fibre, energy production and the wider food chain (related to bio-economy, renewable energies, infrastructure, technologies), and the deployment of climate mitigation and adaptation measures potentially harmful for biodiversity (e.g. concrete walls in coastal areas, replacement of biodiversity rich ecosystems for energy crops, etc.).
• Identify and address leverage points for transformational change in trade, triggering changes in established and new production and consumption patterns for new business models.
• Highlight the potential of public procurement for delivering biodiversity benefits and nature-based solutions for enabling and accelerating the relevant aspects of transformative change. etc. (see page 118-119 of the work programme)

Unsustainable production and consumption, including the role of trade for linking both, are pushing many of the direct drivers of biodiversity loss: land use change, overexploitation, climate change and pollution. Proposals should, based on a clear understanding of these relationships address how leverage points and levers can be identified and used for generating benefits for biodiversity, e.g. through revision of regulation, standards, funding practices or governance processes. They should highlight how the primary production sectors (in particular in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, raw material extraction, and also the construction sector) and the related infrastructure and energy provision and use impacts biodiversity directly. On patterns of consumption, proposals should show how their impacts such as uneven use and exploitation of resources, generation of waste and pollution, value setting, power setting in societies, institutions and financial streams could be addressed in business, institutional and consumer agendas to achieve positive outcomes for biodiversity.