EC: Understanding Routes of Exposure, Toxicological and Ecological Impacts of Chemical Pollution on Terrestrial Biodiversity

Deadline: 28-Mar-23

The European Commission (EC) is seeking applications for the Better understanding of routes of exposure and toxicological and ecological impacts of chemical pollution on terrestrial biodiversity.

Scope

• According to IPBES global assessment report, pollution is one of the five main direct drivers of biodiversity loss. This topic focuses on chemical pollution, which has been increasing in the last decades with key differences by region and by type of pollution. Quantitative assessments include systematically monitored variables with certain emissions into the atmosphere, water bodies and terrestrial systems from industrial activities and households. However, pollution has and is still changing not only in quantitative but also qualitative terms and the monitoring of many dangerous substances, including ones of emerging concern, and knowledge on the way they impact biodiversity and ecosystem services are missing. This topic aims at better understanding the routes of exposure and toxicological and ecological impacts of chemical pollution (excluding industrial contamination) on terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems. According to the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, pressures include the release of nutrients, chemical pesticides, pharmaceuticals, hazardous chemicals, urban and industrial wastewater and other waste including litter and plastics.
• The intensification of the loss of biodiversity in the EU is strongly influenced by the intensification of agriculture, through the high application of fertilizers and pesticides, changes in the species and management of crops, as well as mowing and grazing regimes, and the introduction of new production technologies. Currently, the excessive use of pesticides causes a reduction in the population of, among others, pollinating insects. To support the long-term sustainability of both nature and farming, the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 works in tandem with the farm to fork strategy. The Commission has committed with both strategies to take action to reduce by 50% the overall use of – and the risk from – chemical pesticides by 2030 and reduce by 50% the use of more hazardous pesticides by 2030 in order to reverse the alarming decline of farmland biodiversity.
• Successful proposals are expected to assess the effects and impact of chemical pollutants, in particular the most dangerous substances from agriculture, on the condition of the biodiversity and ecosystems in natural environment (this may include environmental and host associated microbiomes) and consequently on human health, and identify preventive and mitigation measures. It is important to pay special attention to the fact that the reduction in the population of pollinating insects caused, inter alia, by the excessive use of pesticides in EU agriculture also contributes to reducing the amount of food for birds, reducing the regulation of pests, diseases and invasive alien species. More knowledge is also needed on additional negative impacts from other contaminants of emerging concern, including pharmaceuticals such as hormones and antibiotics, veterinary products and persistent e.g., bio-accumulative substances.
• In the context of the EU pollinators’ initiative and the pesticide legislative framework, the EU has increased efforts in the last decade to address this problem. However, knowledge gaps still hinder development and implementation of essential testing methods for a scientifically robust risk assessment of pesticides on wild bees and other wild pollinating insects. This topic will provide a critical contribution to address those knowledge gaps as identified by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Commission and thereby support the implementation of the EFSA guidance on the risk assessment of plant protection products on bees and the efforts on broadening the risk assessment safeguards to other wild pollinator species.

Focus Areas

Proposals should address Area A or Area B as follows:

• Area A: better understanding the routes of exposure of the wild fauna and flora to chemical pollution
  • Successful proposals should:
    • Choose case studies, based on an analysis of chemical contaminations from an environmental history perspective, with representative species on which analysis will be undertaken. Addressing trophic chains is encouraged,
    • Develop a method to establish the routes of contamination with chemicals. Priority should be given to cases with potential contamination with chemical pesticides and their metabolites; contaminants of emerging concern, including pharmaceuticals such as hormones and antibiotics, veterinary products and persistent e.g., bio-accumulative substances, SVHC (Substance of Very High Concern) and emerging pollutants. Other substances in particular micro- and nano-plastics are not excluded. Existing contaminations of the environment (legacy) especially from pesticides should also be considered. However industrial contamination is not in the scope of this topic,
    • Establish the routes of contamination of the chosen representative species with chemicals, in the case studies,
    • Assess the risks resulting from such contaminations for species, for ecosystems and for the local environment, including development of effect-based approach to consider mixture effects and synergies,
    • In particular, establish models to link chemical ecotoxicity stress to damages on (a) genetic diversity, (b) functional diversity, and (c) ecosystem services,
    • Extrapolate to provide an assessment of risks associated with chemical contaminations of terrestrial wild biodiversity at a larger scale,
    • Explore prevention and mitigation measures.
  • Targets groups for this Area are notably regulatory bodies, farmers and other land managers organisations, civil society, local and regional decision –makers.
  • Successful proposals are expected to cooperate with relevant projects supported by the mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”.
• Area B: pollinators and pesticides
  • Successful proposals should:
    • Characterise sources and routes of pesticide exposure in the key pollinator groups (wild bees, butterflies, hoverflies and moths),
    • Investigate sensitivity of pollinators to pesticides and identify for each pollinator group sensitive species that: i) are suitable as test organisms in the risk assessment and ii) require safeguards that would indirectly protect other species within the same group (“umbrella effect”),
    • Improve prediction of the toxicity endpoints, toxic units for chemicals and data poor compounds (e.g., Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models),
    • Develop toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic data and models for single and multiple chemicals,
    • Generate combined toxicity data (lethal and sublethal effects) of multiple chemicals, improving the availability of data in particular for: i) chronic combined toxicity that would make it possible to identify potential interactions that may lead to deviation from dose addition (potentiation, synergism) and ii) sublethal effects.
    • Investigate synergistic effects of typical combinations of pesticides (e.g., based on residue data),
    • Devise and test monitoring schemes for establishing the level of contamination of pollen/nectar/water/plant matrices/soil that can support benchmarking in a predictive risk assessment, development of risk indicators and a system-based risk assessment,
    • Develop an open source curated database on pollinators and the use of pesticides which would include data and information on: i) exposure and hazard, ii) lethal and sublethal effects, toxicokinetics as well as other stressors (e.g., other chemicals, nutrition, etc.) that could amplify the adverse effects through interaction with pesticides,
    • Develop methodologies for risk assessment in open-source tools including toxic units approaches using lethal and sublethal effects as well as validated in silico models applying dose addition as the default model or models integrating synergistic effects,
    • Develop population models and landscape modelling for the risk assessment of multiple chemicals in pollinators with an aim to integrate hazard and exposure information,
    • Develop environmental scenarios for the risk assessment of pollinators that takes into consideration different landscape characteristics and conditions.
  • Proposals should earmark the necessary resources for cooperation and networking activities. Collaboration with the European partnership on biodiversity Biodiversa+ should be explored, as needed. They should use existing platforms and information sharing mechanisms notably the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity.
  • This topic should involve the effective contribution of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines.
  • International cooperation is encouraged.

Funding Information

• The check will normally be done for the coordinator if the requested grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000, except for:
  • public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
  • cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).

Expected Outcome

• In line with the European Green Deal and in particular with the objectives of the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, the EU zero pollution action plan and the EU pollinators initiative, projects results will contribute to the following impact of destination “biodiversity and ecosystem services”: “Understand and address direct drivers of biodiversity decline”.
• Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:
  • Routes of exposure, linked to ecosystem and biodiversity dynamics to chemicals are better understood,
  • Issues raised by the contamination of biodiversity in the natural environment are better known, including risks linked to existing contaminations (legacy), chemicals of emerging concern and accumulations in nature,
  • Environmental fate of new chemicals of emerging concern is better understood,
  • Toxicological and ecological impacts of contaminants are better understood and risk assessments for relevant highly exposed species are strengthened,
  • Prevention and mitigation measures are identified and developed.

Expected Impact

• Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway resulting in the strategic plan having the following impact: “Biodiversity is back on a path to recovery, and ecosystems and their services are preserved and sustainably restored on land, inland water and at sea through improved knowledge and innovation. More specifically, one or more of the following impacts should materialise:
  • Direct drivers of biodiversity decline will be understood and addressed – land and sea use change, natural resource use and exploitation, climate change, pollution, invasive alien species – as well as indirect drivers – demographic, socio-economic, technological, etc.
  • Protected areas and their networks will be planned, managed and expanded and the status of species and habitats will be improved based on up-to-date knowledge and solutions.
  • Biodiversity, ecosystem services and natural capital will be mainstreamed in the society and economy: e.g. they will be integrated into public and business decision-making; approaches for enabling transformative changes to tackle societal challenges will be built including by deploying nature-based solutions (NBS).
  • Practices in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture will be developed and improved to support and make sustainable the use of biodiversity and a wide range of ecosystems services.
  • Biodiversity research and support policies and processes will be interconnected at EU and global levels, making use of advanced digital technologies and societal engagement where appropriate.
  • The biodiversity and health nexus will be understood, in particular at the level of ecosystems. This will be achieved by using the one-health approach, in the context of climate change and globalisation and by addressing contributions and trade-offs.
• The impacts have been revised compared with the 2021-2022 work programme in order to take into account R&I activities included in the 2021-2024 strategic plan, but that are yet to be addressed. This was the case, for instance, for several direct drivers of biodiversity loss. The new drafting of the impacts makes clear that they are within the scope of the work programme.

Eligible Activities

• Eligible activities are the ones described in the call conditions. Applications will only be considered eligible if their content corresponds, wholly or in part, to the topic description for which it is submitted.
• Projects must focus exclusively on civil applications and must not:
  • aim at human cloning for reproductive purposes;
  • intend to modify the genetic heritage of human beings which could make such changes heritable (except for research relating to cancer treatment of the gonads, which may be financed);
  • intend to create human embryos solely for the purpose of research, or for the purpose of stem cell procurement, including by means of somatic cell nuclear transfer.
• Projects must, moreover, comply with EU policy interests and priorities (environment, social, security, industrial policy, etc.).
• The following activities are generally eligible for grants under Horizon Europe:
  • Research and innovation actions (RIA) — Activities that aim primarily to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. This may include basic and applied research, technology development and integration, testing, demonstration and validation of a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment.
  • Innovation actions (IA) — Activities that aim directly to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. These activities may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.
  • Coordination and support actions (CSA) — Activities that contribute to the objectives of Horizon Europe. This excludes research and innovation (R&I) activities, except those carried out under the ‘Widening participation and spreading excellence’ component of the programme.
  • Programme co-fund actions (CoFund) — A programme of activities established or implemented by legal entities managing or funding R&I programmes, other than EU funding bodies. Such a programme of activities may support: networking and coordination; research; innovation; pilot actions; innovation and market deployment; training and mobility; awareness raising and communication; and dissemination and exploitation.
  • Innovation and market deployment actions (IMDA) — Activities that embed an innovation action and other activities necessary to deploy an innovation on the market. This includes the scaling-up of companies and Horizon Europe blended finance.
  • Training and mobility actions (TMA) — Activities that aim to improve the skills, knowledge and career prospects of researchers, based on mobility between countries and, if relevant, between sectors or disciplines.
  • Pre-commercial procurement actions (PCP) — Activities that aim to help a transnational buyers’ group to strengthen the public procurement of research, development, validation and, possibly, the first deployment of new solutions that can significantly improve quality and efficiency in areas of public interest, while opening market opportunities for industry and researchers active in Europe. Eligible activities include the preparation, management and follow-up, under the coordination of a lead procurer, of one joint PCP and additional activities to embed the PCP into a wider set of demand-side activities.
  • Public procurement of innovative solutions actions (PPI) — Activities that aim to strengthen the ability of a transnational buyers’ group to deploy innovative solutions early by overcoming the fragmentation of demand for such solutions and sharing the risks and costs of acting as early adopters, while opening market opportunities for industry. Eligible activities include preparing and implementing, under the coordination of a lead procurer, one joint or several coordinated PPI by the buyers’ group and additional activities to embed the PPI into a wider set of demand-side activities.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
• A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• Beneficiaries and affiliated entities must register in the Participant Register before submitting their application, in order to get a participant identification code (PIC) and be validated by the Central Validation Service before signing the grant agreement. For the validation, they will be asked to upload the necessary documents showing their legal status and origin during the grant preparation stage. A validated PIC is not a prerequisite for submitting an application.
• Specific Cases
  • Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
  • Associated partners — Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call conditions.
  • Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
  • EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
• To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States: Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe; Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine.

For more information, visit EC.