Deadline: 06-Oct-21
European Commission has announced the proposals for Quantify Impacts of the Trade in Raw and Processed Biomass on Ecosystems for offering new leverage points for biodiversity conservation, along with supply chains, to reduce leakage effects.
Scope
- In addition to focusing on limiting the impacts from biomass production and consumption on biodiversity, proposals should look at the whole trade-related value chain, at the scale needed to have a greater effect on protecting and restoring biodiversity. Proposals should analyse how the biomass sector could increase its positive impact on biodiversity.
- They should support biodiversity to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services, including on mitigating and adapting to climate change.
- Proposals should increase the volume of evidence available by taking systematic approaches that take account of links between activities and leakage effects at different stages in the value chain or link production and consumption explicitly, including with institutions, businesses, retailers and investors, civil society, and should cover more than one product at a time.
Funding Information
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 Outcomes
- In line with the EU biodiversity strategy, a successful proposal will develop knowledge and tools to understand the role of transformative change for biodiversity policy making, address the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss, and initiate, accelerate and upscale biodiversity-relevant transformative changes in their society. Projects should address all following outcomes:
- understanding and quantifying the impacts of the trade in raw and processed non-food biomass from land and sea on biodiversity and on the wide range of services that ecosystems can provide, including in relation to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
- identifying new leverage points for biodiversity conservation, for example along supply chains, within and beyond the retailing sector, reducing leakage effects (including carbon leakage), and providing recommendations on how to address these leverage points at corporate and institutional level.
- making available and using (local) solutions for retailers and their leverage effects on (global aspects of) patterns of biomass production and consumption, rebuilding their economy in a biodiversity-friendly way within planetary boundaries, including through sustainable corporate governance.
- specifying the meaning of transformational change in practice, based on case studies.
- improving the understanding of the biodiversity inter-dependencies of the SDGs; strengthening IPBES and IPCC by the contribution of European research and innovation.
- providing approaches, tools and knowledge influence policies at the right level on transformative change for biodiversity – the key elements of this change by the portfolio of cooperating projects (of which these projects are part).
- With the focus on quantifying impacts of trade of raw and processed biomass on ecosystems, projects are encouraged to engage in international cooperation (in particular with African countries, Brazil, Latin American and Caribbean countries or the Mediterranean region) to find new leverage points for biodiversity conservation along supply chains and to reduce leakage effects for the EU and associated countries.
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.
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe
- low- and middle-income countries
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3xlMmMc