Welcome to the spring edition of the dedicated Biodiversa+ Partners’ Bulletin page! On this page, you’ll find everything that could not be fitted in the actual bulletin sent to your email.
Click on the icons below to jump to the corresponding work package’s section!
The kick-off meeting of the 36 research projects funded under the BiodivProtect 2021-2022 Call on “Supporting the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems across land and sea” was organised on 19-20 April 2023 by Biodiversa+ together with TA CR (the Technology Agency from Czech Republic) in Prague (Czech Republic) and online.
The first day of the meeting was public and provided a good opportunity to learn more about the research projects funded under the first Biodiversa+ joint call. It gathered over 200 persons including ~120 on-site participants. The second day was a closed clustering workshop reserved for the researchers and the representatives of the funded projects. The objective was for them to identify synergies and areas of collaboration amongst each other. The clustering workshop was co-organised with ETAg (Estonian Research Council, Estonia).
To learn more about this event and the 36 funded projects, you can access the replay of the first day!
Reminder | You can also find the complete list of funded projects with the countries involved.
The Brochure of the BiodivProtect Call was released in April and provides an overview of the call topic, process and results, including a summary of each funded projects. You can find it on the Biodiversa+ website.
A data management workshop is also organised in the context of the BiodivProtect 2021-2022 Call . This workshop will be held on the 30 May (1PM-6PM CEST) for the coordinators and data managers of the funded projects. It will aim to provide the necessary tools to further improve and implement their Data Management Plans (DMPs).
For more questions or more information, contact Harri Hautala (AKA).
The second step of the BiodivMon 2022-2023 Call on “Improved transnational monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem change for science and society” is closed since 5 April. The proposals are currently being evaluated and the evaluation committee meeting will be organised at the end of June in London, United Kingdom.
For more information, you can contact Céline Billière (Biodiversa+ Operational Team and Call Secretariat, ANR).
The BiodivNBS 2023-2024 call for research proposals on Nature-Based Solutions is currently under development:
The call will be pre-announced on 5 June and officially launched in September. We will provide you with a text for this and count on you to help us disseminate this major research funding opportunity.
For more information, you can contact Clara Superbie (Biodiversa+ Operational Team and Call Secretariat, ANR) at: clara.superbie@agencerecherche.fr.
To provide a good overview of the main achievements and next steps for biodiversity monitoring, the WP2 task leaders invited all the active partners to an information meeting in April. It was also an opportunity for our partners to meet with our key collaborator EuropaBON.
You want to learn more as well? Find out more by listening to the meeting recording and accessing the slides.
You want to better understand how the biodiversity monitoring budget works? You can watch, access the slides and read the FAQ presented during the dedicated information session that took place in April.
WP2 has kept very busy between January and May 2023. Four new deliverables were released:
Stay tuned, more biodiversity monitoring deliverables are being finalised!
6 candidate biodiversity monitoring pilots are being co-developed with the interested Biodiversa+ partners. Up to 3 will be selected in September by the General Assembly to kick-start in January 2024. More information was shared during an information session in March.
The Annual event of NetworkNature will take place in Brussels on 8 June 2023. NetworkNature is coming to an end this summer and this event will be a opportunity to reflect and present NetworkNature achievements, as well as to prepare the grounds for the next chapter, NetworkNature+.
During this event will be launched officially the EU R&I Roadmap for Nature-based solutions, facilitated by Biodiversa+ !
A main highlight of the Biodiversa+ WP4 is the science-policy forum on “knowledge and capacity to facilitate the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”. This event took place in Prague and online on 18 April. This forum was attended by around 100 on-site participants in Prague, in addition to 117 online attendees and co-organised by several Biodiversa+ partners including Formas, FRB, ANR and TA CR. This forum was a great success!
Biodiversa+ organised an online workshop together with Global Research Infrastructure on 5 April 2023. The objectives of the workshop were to identify possible barriers to the use of research infrastructure, and assess what Biodiversa+ can do to help overcome these. The outputs from this workshop will be the basis for an upcoming report on “Reinforcing the use of European and global research infrastructure by biodiversity researchers in the European Research Area”, which will be ready in September 2023.
One week before the science-policy forum, Biodiversa+ invited the European press to a 1-hour online briefing introducing the theme and stakes of the forum, providing an overview of the science-policy debates surrounding the GBF, as well as presenting how Biodiversa+ aims to support the implementation of the framework.
The press briefing was recorded and can be watched on replay.
We have started a reflection about our flagship programmes: what does this term mean for Biodiversa+? How do they contribute to our overall strategy? How can we give them more visibility and better communicate on their impact ?
A working group has been set up with the Coordination Team to lead these discussions, with a first meeting that took place in April. Partners will be informed about advancements in these reflections in the coming months.
Ensuring that Biodiversa+ important information, news and opportunities are relayed on your respective websites, newsletters and social media channels will drastically increase the visibility and the impact of our activities.
To ensure a direct, two-way flow of information between Biodiversa+’s and your organisations’ communication teams, we would like to set up a true network of communication officers.
Help us to identify the colleagues in your organisation we should contact for communication matters!
We foresee the following types of activities within this network of partners’ communication teams:
Biodiversa+ and Alternet are now officially key collaborators! Both organisations are working together to strengthen the European science-policy/science-society interface and to foster capacity building for researchers from the biodiversity field. As part of this key collaboration, Biodiversa+ is co-funding and co-organising the yearly Alternet summer schools in Peyresq, France. This year’s session is themed “Biodiversity and Society: science, policy and transformative change”. Two members of the Biodiversa+ Operational Team and four early career researchers from Biodiversa projects will receive a support from Biodiversa+ to attend this year’s edition.
Biodiversa+ also co-funded in March the 1st edition of the A4Cap Assembly, an initiative by the Alternet Alumni for Capacity-building Network, to pursue and strengthen the outcomes of the summer schools by being a platform for former summer school students for networking, capacity building and peer to peer training.
The Enlarged Stakeholder Board and Advisory Board have had their yearly and bi-yearly meetings in Paris and Brussels, in May. These meetings were an opportunity to get their advice on the 2nd instalment activities, future work streams and flagship programmes, including how to best link it to the GBF. The Advisory Board has provided feedback on the biodiversity monitoring pilots and how Biodiversa+ can contribute to the GBF implementation transversally.
Conclusions and recommendations from the ESB and AB meetings will be shared during the September GA.
As the current representative of the European policy makers or advisor college, Markus Erhard (EEA) is retiring, a new election was conducted appointing Janica Borg (EEA) as the new college representative, and thus new AB member.
In February, Biodiversa+ held a workshop on citizen science with two focus points: one on how citizen science can contribute to biodiversity monitoring and one on the citizen science landscape and identification of Biodiversa+ added value to promote citizen science in view of the update of the Citizen science toolkit (planned for end 2023) and future collaborations with citizen science initiatives.
WP7 is also working on updating the Policy Guide toolkit by the end of 2023.
An internal guide on stakeholder engagement to support work packages and sub-tasks work involving stakeholders is under development and should be shared soon.
The Biodiversa+ staff exchange will also be organised back-to-back with the General Assembly meeting. The theme of this staff exchange is national mirror groups. More information will be shared on this topic shortly.
In the context of its BiodivClim COFUND Action, Biodiversa+ launched a knowledge hub on nature-based solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The BiodivClim knowledge hub was launched in February and is composed of 32 researchers from BiodivClim funded projects, projects funded under H2020 Research and Innovation Actions, and projects funded by Joint Programme Initiatives such as FACCE-JPI and JPI Climate).
During two days, the experts gathered to reflect on the implementation of the knowledge hub work plan. They agreed to work on the following products over the next two years:
Find out more about the BiodivClim knowledge hub!
In June 2023, the BiodivScen Action, launched in 2017 together with the Belmont Forum, is coming to an end. The BiodivScen call that was co-funded by the European commission led to the funding of 21 research projects.
These 21 funded projects gathered online on 16 May afternoon and the morning of 17 May to present their major research results as well as their policy and societal impact.
This event was organsied back-to-back with a strategic foresight Workshop, aiming at discussing how the BiodivScen call helped fill knowledge gaps related to biodiversity and ecosystem services scenarios, and what are the new knowledge frontiers in this domain.