From symptoms to systems: BiodivTransform gets underway

The kick-off meeting of the BiodivTransform call did more than introduce 35 newly funded projects. It offered a first view of the research culture and scientific ambition Biodiversa+ is trying to support through this portfolio. Across the day, the projects were framed not simply as contributions to biodiversity research, but as part of a broader effort to understand how biodiversity decline is produced through institutions, infrastructures, incentives, values and power relations.

A broad portfolio with a recognisable direction

The 35 projects span environments, regions and disciplines, from rice systems to offshore wind, from floodplain restoration to multispecies governance, from urban biodiversity to transboundary conservation. That breadth is real. But the kick-off also showed that the portfolio is not scattered.

Across very different case studies, similar questions kept returning. Where do the deeper drivers of biodiversity decline sit? Which actors are included in decisions, and which are marginalised? How can participation be meaningful rather than procedural? How do you work with conflict, uncertainty and uneven power? What does it mean to design research that can stay with complexity instead of flattening it into tidy conclusions? These questions gave the portfolio a clear centre of gravity from the outset, moving biodiversity loss out of a narrow environmental frame and into the wider systems that shape it.

A ambitious starting point

That ambition was expressed very directly in the keynote, which described the portfolio as “a preview of a new operating system for society”, suggesting that biodiversity can serve as “an organizing principle for rethinking society”. It gave the day its tone, framing the projects not simply as contributions to a research field, but as attempts to rethink how biodiversity is connected to infrastructure, economies, governance and everyday life.

The keynote also placed the portfolio in conversation with the IPBES Transformative Change and Nexus Assessments, urging projects to build on existing knowledge, move beyond it where necessary, and challenge it where blind spots or marginalisations persist.

Energy transitions without easy narratives

One of the strongest clusters in the portfolio concerns renewable energy and its ecological footprint. Offshore wind was presented not simply as infrastructure placed in the sea, but as a broader reordering of marine space and ecology. MARE-WIND focuses on questions such as artificial reef effects, trophic interactions, contamination and the influence of electromagnetic fields from subsea cables on species movement and behaviour. UrbanOcean, in turn, treats offshore wind as a process of “ocean urbanisation”, pointing to fragmentation, sensory disturbance, altered trophic dynamics and governance conflicts in the open ocean.

Land-based transitions raised parallel questions. JustBioSolar, for example, placed biodiversity, landscapes and justice in the same frame, showing how solar expansion can reshape local economies and senses of place. TRANS4BIO approached the issue through cross-scale governance, teleconnected risks and infrastructure lock-in, underlining how difficult it is to align climate action, biodiversity protection and social fairness across different levels of decision-making.

The point was not to oppose climate action and biodiversity protection, but to show how tightly they are bound together in practice. These projects ask what happens when transitions move quickly, across large areas and under strong political pressure, and how they can proceed without transferring costs onto ecosystems, landscapes or vulnerable communities.

Conservation does not sit outside geopolitics

Another strong thread running through the kick-off was the political reality of biodiversity governance across borders. Projects such as ACT, ICE BRIDGE and PaCE made clear that conservation cannot be separated from diplomacy, conflict or fractured regional relations. ACT’s work on transboundary conservation showed how collaborative governance depends on trust, institutional compatibility and the ability to navigate disparities in law, capacity and stakeholder interests. ICE BRIDGE, by contrast, focused attention on the Arctic, where biodiversity protection, climate intervention and justice concerns may collide before governance frameworks are ready. PaCE brought these tensions into contested seas, where ecological concerns are inseparable from maritime disputes and geopolitical pressure.

These examples gave the portfolio a political depth that is sometimes absent from biodiversity communication. They suggested that in many places the question is not only how to improve conservation, but how to keep ecological cooperation possible when wider political conditions are deteriorating.

Methods that work under uncertainty

The kick-off also showed how strongly the portfolio is investing in methods. Some projects are building new ways of anticipating change. Others are designing tools for more grounded and participatory forms of evidence production. SURPRISES, for instance, focuses on anticipatory governance and social-ecological tipping points in ocean systems. SEAWATCH turns fishing vessels into biodiversity monitoring platforms by embedding sensors and data collection into existing practice. BIODENCITY combines modelling, biodiversity monitoring and urban living labs to test whether denser cities can also be more nature-positive. PEACE brings in participatory monitoring, citizen juries and deliberative processes to connect local knowledge with governance support.

What links these different approaches is not a common tool, but a shared response to uncertainty. Rather than assuming that systems can be made fully predictable, the projects tend to work from the opposite premise: that complex social-ecological situations require forms of evidence and participation that are iterative, situated and open to adjustment.

Research culture under scrutiny

One of the key discussions of the kick-off was that of research itself. Again and again, discussion returned to the conditions under which transformative research is actually done. The keynote called for a form of research that is more selective in what it produces, more ambitious in the impact it seeks, and more willing to cultivate what was described as the “social soil” of change. That line addressed a frustration many participants recognised: current academic systems still tend to reward predictability, volume and disciplinary comfort more reliably than exploratory or genuinely co-produced work. The issue surfaced in discussions about extractive participation, about the pressure to publish even when few people have the time to read what is produced, and about the difficulty of communicating knowledge in forms that communities and policymakers can actually use.

That made the kick-off notable in another way: transformative change was treated not only as something research should study, but also as something research institutions may need to undergo.

BiodivTransform is not built around the idea that more knowledge, by itself, will solve the problem. Its premise is more demanding: understanding biodiversity decline requires confronting the systems that drive it, and research has to think carefully about its own role in that process.