Horizon EU | BIONEXT: The Biodiversity Nexus: Transformative Change For Sustainability

Achieving sustainable development includes mainstreaming biodiversity, which underpins the provision of food, fibre and water. It also mitigates and provides resilience to climate change. In this context, the EU-funded BIONEXT will develop knowledge, tools and guidance for mainstreaming biodiversity into policymaking. It will analyse the implications of transformative change in the biodiversity nexus for EU environmental policy actions. The project will provide concrete options on how to initiate, accelerate and upscale biodiversity-relevant transformative change in society. BIONEXT will also develop an app that will allow users to explore transformational building blocks, for formulating policies and implementing pathways for the biodiversity nexus.

Objective

BIONEXT will develop knowledge, tools, and guidance for mainstreaming biodiversity into policy making and provide concrete options on how to initiate, accelerate and upscale biodiversity relevant transformative change in society. It will deliver an innovative Nexus Modelling Framework that will integrate scenarios and pathways in a co-production process with stakeholders, while modelling interlinkages between biodiversity, water, food, energy, transport, climate, and health, and enabling simulation of the impacts of indirect and direct drivers on biodiversity. Through its database of transformative change cases, BIONEXT will involve policy- and decision-makers and allows them to explore the concept of just transformative change. Plausible futures and desirable, nature-positive visions for Europe and multiple just transition pathways will be co-created in workshops and focus groups taking place in various cities around Europe. With the involvement of diverse stakeholders, the BIONEXT Pathways App will be delivered as a novel decision support tool that allows users to explore transformational building blocks, for formulating policies and implementation pathways for the biodiversity nexus. The results will contribute to science brokerage, capacity building and networking to IPBES, EU policymakers, and civil society.