EU-China international cooperation on improving monitoring for better integrated climate and biodiversity approaches, using environmental and Earth observation

The EU and China face similar challenges as a result of climate change where it comes to biodiversity related aspects, while reaching climate neutrality will require critical contributions from terrestrial land, including through enhancing net carbon dioxide removals. Similar challenges could benefit from similar actions and defining best practices in improving monitoring of terrestrial ecosystems in order to design better approaches integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation, and biodiversity conservation.

The successful project should provide improvements in biodiversity monitoring infrastructures in support of integrated approaches able to deliver better synergies between mitigation, adaptation and conservation. Such integrated approaches can include a wide range of mitigation options, such as protection and restoring natural ecosystems, sustainable land management practices, sustainable forest and grassland management. Such options, based on a smart use of natural ecological processes and improved technologies, contribute to improving the quality, diversity and resilience of ecosystems, all of which have substantial benefits for biodiversity.

Most monitoring instruments for climate and biodiversity indicators on terrestrial land are carried out in a non-integrated manner and are based on statistical inventories without explicit geographical resolution. Earth observation (including satellite and near surface remote sensing as well as ground based methods), alongside analysis tools such as Geographic Information Systems, can be combined as multiple geographically-explicit data sets. Data acquisition, processing, cross-referencing and coherent integration on terrestrial land require substantial research and innovation investments.

Improving ground-based monitoring for better integrated approaches should assess or set up a strategy to assess the potential of natural and managed terrestrial ecosystems to contribute to:

• climate mitigation, including enhancing net carbon removals,
• climate adaptation, including resilience and disaster risk prevention, and
• protection, conservation and restoration of biodiversity.

Improving existing monitoring, including through designing new datasets and methods to set up a geographically-explicit monitoring of climate and biodiversity aspects fits within the scope of this topic.

The successful proposal should contribute to a strengthened cooperation between the EU and China, also in the context of a better cooperation under the Group on Earth Observations initiatives, building on the climate and biodiversity monitoring networks in China and the EU.

This topic is part of the EU-China flagship initiative on Climate Change and Biodiversity, which will promote substantial coordinated and balanced cooperation between the EU and China and is within the scope of the Administrative Arrangement between the European Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China on a Co-funding Mechanism for the period 2021-2024 to support collaborative research projects under the Food, Agriculture and Biotechnologies (FAB) and the Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) flagship initiatives.

The use of existing data and information coming from e.g. Copernicus and GEOSS is encouraged. Interaction with other actions developed under the EU-China Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) Research Flagship and/or the Flagship on Food, Agriculture and Biotechnologies is encouraged, as well as related topics within Cluster 5 and 6 and existing cooperation between the EU and China on land, including soils.