BIONEXT newsletter – July 2024

Editorial: Moving towards Good Anthropocene

I have just come back from the third World Biodiversity Forum in beautiful Davos, Switzerland. This biennial event, akin to the World Economic Forum but for biodiversity, brings together researchers and practitioners across sectors and disciplines to exchange, bridge and translate science into actions. This year, we witnessed diverse communities from biodiversity and climate sciences, social sciences, arts, and finance co-develop visions and generate new evidence for nature and people positive futures. Many actors around the globe are looking into the processes and the levers for transformative change across society from individual to institutional perspectives. Through this, we are improving our understanding of how complex interactions between human and natural systems are and their dynamic impact on biodiversity, climate and society. We are also learning how co-produced knowledge and solution- and action-oriented future prospecting can help explore and identify pathways towards more sustainable and equitable futures.

In this respect, the BIONEXT project has been progressing actively over the last few months in contributing to this global effort. We have observed and reflected on how biodiversity was negotiated in the climate science-policy interface at the UNFCCC COP28. The very first policy brief of BIONEXT was published on exploring transformative solutions for biodiversity and sustainability synthesizing the project’s progress. The project also published its first scientific paper on understanding the role of biodiversity across climate, food, water, health, energy, and transport domains through literature, and synthesized evidence on their interlinkages. BIONEXT successfully held the second stakeholder workshop in beautiful Schoorle Dunes National Park in the Netherlands where stakeholders were re-convened in exploring transformative pathways towards the European Nature Future visions co-developed in 2023. With parallel workstreams that will be actively going across work packages in the coming months, the consortium will continue to gather evidence, engage experts and stakeholders, and synthesize knowledge and experience in co-identifying pathways towards achieving biodiverse European Nature Futures.

HyeJin Kim is a scenario developer at UKCEH, undertaking the review on biodiversity nexus and contributing to the development of a new scenario modelling framework for nature-people positive futures in Europe.

Main findings, results and recommendations

This section presents the main findings, results and recommendations from the project over the last six months.

• Biodiversity impacts climate, food, water, energy, transport and health and vice versa. Human activities negatively impact biodiversity through land or water use and change and degradation, climate change, and direct fatalities from collisions. BIodiversity impacts negatively human activities through competition for land, vector-born diseases and invasive alien species.

• Individuals and groups across Europe are pioneering innovative ways to combat biodiversity loss. Based on interviews and focus groups with people from across Europe we have distilled seven distinct bottom-up ways to integrate biodiversity into their practices. Ranging from integrating biodiversity in business operations to initiating collective action, these bottom-up efforts drive transformative change.

• Based on the analysis of 500 case studies from all over the world, a selection of European cases were found to have transformative potential and were broken down into so-called “transformative elements” that represent e.g., the interventions, outcomes and processes across cases, and that will serve as a database for further analysis of archetypes of transformative change. Based on the coding and analyses of the interventions, outcomes, and processes, it is possible to conclude that some nexus elements were present in all cases (biodiversity, water, also societal, economic, and governmental aspects), some elements in less of them (health, food, energy, transport), and some elements as well as processes were vastly under-represented (equity, gender, processes linked to power to transcend paradigms, or to add, change, evolve, or self-organise system structures).

Learn more

Biodiversity’s impact on climate, food, water, energy, transport and health and vice versa

Biodiversity has a vital role in food production and consumption, water quality and availability, climate regulation and mitigation, human and ecosystem health, energy production and means of transportation.

But how does biodiversity actually impact climate, food, water, energy, transport and health and vice versa?

Read our blog and publication about biodiversity’s impacts on climate, food, water, energy, transport and health.

Policy brief | Exploring Transformative Solutions for Biodiversity and Sustainability

Many recent international science-policy assessments emphasise that Business-as-Usual is no longer sustainable. ✋ Instead, transformative change of our socio-economic systems is required for tackling issues such as biodiversity loss and climate change.

Read our new Policy Brief to learn more about the nexus, transformative change and their links.

Blog | Unveiling Synergies: Biodiversity and the UN’s Climate Conference of 2023

The role of biodiversity in tackling the climate crisis is becoming more and more apparent. But how did the Cop28 in Dubai reflect nature and biodiversity loss?

Six key considerations in our blog.

Workshop: Arriving at nature-centered futures

A future where nature and society are thriving together, with biodiversity at the heart of our decisions shaping and governing society: how do we get there? And how can we trigger such transformative change? Following up on last year's BIONEXT workshop that proposed a new set of visions for a nature-centered Europe in 2050, stakeholders reconvened in the Netherlands last May to design pathways towards these visions.

Read our blogs about the methodology and results.

In the spotlight: food

In every newsletter, we give a spotlight on one element from the biodiversity nexus. For the thirdnewsletter, we introduce food.

The depletion of natural resources and population growth threaten food security; the unsustainable practices of diverse sectors contribute to environmental pollution across aquatic and terrestrial realms, and competition for land arises from agricultural, forestry urbanization, and protected areas’ demands.

In addition, food has multiple bidirectional interlinkages with water, climate, energy, transport, health, and biodiversity. For example, food availability and diversity are defined by biodiversity, climate, and water, while food production requires energy use, its distribution is facilitated by transport systems, and food quality and accessibility determine population health status. In turn, food production, especially for diets high in animal products, generates one of humanity’s largest carbon, water, and land footprints. This footprint wreaks alterations across ecosystems worldwide. The impacts of the food system transcend local or national boundaries, becoming an issue of socio-environmental (in)justice.

News from other projects

Biodiversity Beat: How CO-OP4CBD Makes a Difference in Overcoming the Challenges of Expert Involvement in CBD Processes

As part of the Biodiversity Beat series, which highlights efforts supporting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, CO-OP4CBD partner Robin Goffaux from the Foundation for Research and Biodiversity (FRB) was interviewed by David Ainsworth during SBSTTA-26 in Nairobi, Kenya.

“Connecting Biodiversity Knowledge & Decision-Making”

Aimed to bring forward the dialogue about the connection between research and policy-making within the EU, on 16 April BioAgora held an online information event titled "Connecting Biodiversity Knowledge & Decision-Making". The event gathered more than 150 participants, amongst which EC policy-makers and representatives over 70 EU-funded projects.

Webinar 'Transforming Finance for Biodiversity and Climate Change'

On the 26th of April, 2024, TRANSPATH hosted an enlightening webinar on 'Transforming Finance for Biodiversity and Climate Change'. Organized in close collaboration with the EU Business & Biodiversity Platform, this event highlighted the pivotal role of the financial sector in fostering a biodiverse, climate-resilient, and equitable future.

BioValue Insights: first webinar of the series “Unlocking biodiversity value in spatial planning”

The first Webinar of the BioValue reflection journey to enhance transformation was held on March 15th by Trento University partners. The online session aimed at sharing BioValue’s first results on how spatial planning and management instruments (SP&MI) can proactively ensure biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning.

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