Specific Challenge:

This European Green Deal call should be pivotal in demonstrating and promoting systemic solutions on restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services, and deliver tangible benefits for biodiversity and climate change mitigation and adaptation. The European Green Deal and its Biodiversity Strategy request urgent up-scaling restoration efforts for damaged ecosystems at sea and on land to increase biodiversity and deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. Underpinned by knowledge in the latest IPCC and IPBES reports, large-scale ecosystem restoration is urgent – the window of opportunity is closing as we speak. It needs a systemic approach to deliver on the Green Deal actions for climate (mitigation and adaptation), biodiversity, zero pollution and sustainable food systems (from farm to fork). Whilst solutions are available now, they are neither up-scaled nor integrated enough in today’s governance, investment or policy support landscapes. The environmental urgency highlights the limits of current management approaches and calls for investment in innovative restoration approaches that could trigger the necessary and urgent transformational changes we need. The global biodiversity post-2020 framework seeks voluntary commitments by business and stakeholders to invest in biodiversity. These topics need large financial support to test new approaches to speed up actions in the UN decade for restoration.

Resilient ecosystems are natural sinks for CO2 from the atmosphere and can support adaptation to the locked-in climate change. Aside from being an essential carbon sink, oxygen source, and delivering a wide range of services (climate change adaptation, health and well-being, food, feed, fibre or fuel provision across the bioeconomy, recreation, water retention and purification, air quality, nutrient cycling), ecosystems are of relevance in a wide range of sectors, which impact the everyday life of Europe’s citizens. Yet, biodiversity is being lost, and ecosystems are degrading at an alarming rate. Pressures on biodiversity increase at a faster rate than the efforts to protect it . The integrity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their capacity to deliver a wide range of essential services to people will be further undermined by the effects of unavoidable climate change. There is therefore an urgent need to strengthen their resilience against environmental and climate stressors while integrating the local socio-economic specificities. This call seeks answers on how to frame transformational change, which supports a just transition – to show how investing in nature restoration can explicitly help vulnerable regions and communities to improve their resilience when rapid changes in climate and environment, economies and social conditions occur. This call topic therefore responds to the urgent double challenge of (i) accelerating transformative change through (ii) upscaling restoration of ecosystems at sea and on land.
 

Scope:

This project will demonstrate how restoration (in structure, function and connectivity) of biodiversity and ecosystem services can be scaled up  in regions with severe biodiversity loss, so that opportunities for substantial biodiversity and ecosystem services gains will be realised, which in turn deliver social and economic benefits. This could pilot the integration of nature-based solutions focussed on restoration across economic sectors. This pilot is a Green Deal enabler and can be used as a testbed for further infrastructure investment by the European Climate Bank (EIB), for LIFE SNAPs, and relevant further budget lines in the next Multiannual Financing Framework. Appropriate budget for cooperation with previous projects on restoration and nature-based solutions , and with Horizon Europe activities such as the Partnerships should be envisaged. This project aims at integrating systemic transformations through restoration in governance, policy making, financing, public procurement, economic development, infrastructure and regional strategic planning. It will test and evaluate approaches to create value with the human communities affected by transformative change, in innovative ways and by avoiding negative externalities through improving their living conditions by restoring their terrestrial and/or marine environment.

The project will develop a scalability plan, diffusion of solutions, and a process for commitments in adopting large-scale restoration within existing governance and financing systems, so relevant communities can replicate the upscaling across the EU and internationally. It should seek guarantees for the non-reversibility of restoration activities after the end of the project. Activities of this project related to improving ecosystem condition must be integrated into best practice monitoring activities within respective monitoring governance schemes (no new restoration monitoring approaches should be developed within this project). This project must explicitly foresee deliverables which allow further monitoring schemes to apply (or test, if necessary) on efficiency and output indicators related to restoration, its benefits and trade-offs. 

This project should respond to the urgency for addressing upscaling restoration challenges, restoration potential of degraded ecosystems, significance of research for supporting EU policy needs and contribution to the international biodiversity agenda, technical and economic feasibility of proposed actions, EU added value, co-benefits across multiple sectors, addressing identified knowledge gaps, and synergies/complementarity with R&I Partnerships and Missions, and with MFF programmes.

International cooperation in adapting restoration upscaling approaches when demonstrating their use for European conditions, and to apply the developed upscaling approaches internationally, is encouraged.

Expected impact:

This action shows how transformational change through restoration delivers at large scale, delivering first visible results and examples on land and sea casesby 2024, with benefits increasing in the long-term. Results of this action will enhance natural carbon sinks and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, locally reverse the degradation of ecosystems, increase connectivity, and improve the delivery of a range of ecosystem services . The call will provide testing at large scale of support actions to the EU commitment to reduce emission by 50-55% by 2030 and become net carbon-neutral by 2050 (European Green Deal), the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the EU Nature Directives, the Farm-to-Fork Strategy, the Climate Law, the Bioeconomy Strategy and Action Plan, the EU Covenant of Mayors, EU Adaptation Strategy (2013), the UN Decade of Restoration and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It will pilot and identify urgent, suitable innovative systems and methodologies for the ecological restoration of carbon sinks, with a view to significantly reducing the carbon and environmental footprint of Europe whilst helping with the implementation of EU climate, energy, biodiversity, agricultural, forestry and fisheries policies. It will create opportunities for public-private partnerships and (voluntary) market-based incentives for business and individuals within restoration initiatives.  Trans-disciplinary research and stakeholder engagement shall ensure co-funding for long-term maintenance. It will demonstrate the empowerment, involvement and reconnection of citizens with nature. Massive restoration action would clearly deliver on public spending for public good and could be highly engaging and visible to citizens. It will develop answers on how to frame transformational change, which supports a just transition by investing in nature, to explicitly help vulnerable regions and communities to improve their resilience when rapid changes in climate and environment, economies and social conditions occur.

Type of action: Research and innovation actions 

Disclaimer: The presentation of draft topics and the feedback provided shall in under no circumstances bind the European Commission in the final formulation of topics for the call. The binding call text will be published following the formal decision by the European Commission on the Funding and tender opportunities portal. (Source https://ec.europa.eu/)