BIODIVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE FOR PLURAL AND NATURE-POSITIVE SOCIETIES

Informazioni relative al progetto

BIOTraCes

ID dell’accordo di sovvenzione: 101081923

DOI

10.3030/101081923

Data della firma CE 10 Ottobre 2022

Data di avvio 1 Dicembre 2022

Data di completamento 30 Novembre 2026

Finanziato da

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Costo totale

€ 4 620 652,50

Contributo UE

€ 4 620 652,50

Coordinato da

STICHTING WAGENINGEN RESEARCH
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BIOTraCes (BIODIVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE FOR PLURAL AND NATURE-POSITIVE SOCIETIES)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-12-01 al 2024-05-31

Sintesi del contesto e degli obiettivi generali del progetto

The key objective of the BIOTraCes project is to co-produce knowledge enabling to develop approaches and strategies that contribute to transformative changes. These changes are necessary to preserve and restore biodiversity across Europe. The objective will be achieved by building upon principles of pluralising, empowering, politicising and embedding, developing capacities for innovation and fostering transformative (i.e. adaptive, plural and equitable) governance approaches to achieve just and nature-positive societies. The following are objectives that will specify the main objective:
O1: Understand the role of diverse values, knowledge systems, power, and behaviour in transformative biodiversity approaches.
O2: Demonstrate practices and key principles of transformative change for nature-positive societies.
O3: Develop strategies to aid transformative (i.e. integrative, adaptive, inclusive and pluralistic) governance approaches.
O4: Contribute to propelling transformative changes for biodiversity, local to global.

BIOTraCes will develop Theories of Transformative Change for Biodiversity that relate plurality of (cultural, religious, social, economic) values and power (lock-ins and leverage) to behavior (practices, actions, choices and decisions) in relation to the underlying drivers of biodiversity decline. BIOTraCes focuses on transformative biodiversity innovations in four high-impact sectors through nine cases: agriculture and food, forestry, water and urbanization. These local case studies are spread across Europe and will help to understand how plural and often marginalized values, identities (intersectionality) and knowledge systems, related to living with and caring for nature, can shape behavior. In 2 year long case studies, we do participative action research in which we work together with societal partners and with whom we will be testing interventions. We will analyze indirect causes of biodiversity loss: structural factors, such as power lock-ins, that form barriers to sustainable decisions and behavior and the levers to overcome these obstacles.

Lavoro eseguito dall’inizio del progetto fino alla fine del periodo coperto dalla relazione e principali risultati finora ottenuti

In the first 18 Months of the BIOTraCes project, the emphasis was on jointly developing a conceptual framework and getting started with the collaborations (locally, regionally, national and EU) and case studies. A literature review on Theories of Transformative Change was carried out, resulting in an overview and structuring into 4 different theoretical schools of thought. Other reports related to developing the conceptual framework, concern ‘research ethics and principles for equitable participation’ and ‘tools and approaches for action research, participatory monitoring and learning’, ‘theories and methods for transformative biodiversity innovations analysis’, ‘theories and methods for social ecological systems’, ‘theories and methods to disclose the underlying causes of biodiversity loss’ and ‘Methods for synthesis and comparative analysis’. In the case studies we are exploring and demonstrating practices and key principles of transformative change for nature-positive societies.
Besides reports, also quite some other output has been realised, such as video’s, presentations, keynotes, factsheets, workshops, journalistic articles, press release, etc. They can be found via the BIOTraCes website and the various BIOTraCes social media channels.
Besides collaborations within our cases, we also cooperate with various other Horizon Europe projects, individually, via the working groups values, norms and justice, via the Cluster projects and outside the cluster with flagship initiatives. Moreover we play an active role in the scientific community on Transformative change for biodiversity (keynote speaker, leading workshops, etc.). Also active contributions are made to the IPBES assessment (multiple authors and reviewers in our project team), CBD and IPCC.

Progressi oltre lo stato dell’arte e potenziale impatto previsto (incluso l’impatto socioeconomico e le implicazioni sociali più ampie del progetto fino ad ora)

BIOTraCes aims to go beyond the state of the art by:
1) Being inclusive. Current research and policy are dominated by views that separate humans and nature, without questioning underlying values, and do not recognise the diversity of worldviews and human-nature relationships. BIOTraCes will expose plurality of views and values and actively give the stage to groups, views and values that are often marginalised, but are promising for a nature-positive society.
2) Being effective. Current views on biodiversity governance, in science and policy making alike, are mostly mechanistic. A better understanding of behaviour and the role of values, culture, intersectionality and power will help developing more effective and transformative public and private biodiversity policies. We aim to make a significant contribution to strategy development in realizing a nature positive society at multiple levels using multiple pathways.
3) Being just. Current institutions and social structures, create or overlook forms of social, intergenerational and environmental injustice. BIOTraCes makes such perverse practices visible and offers alternative principles and approaches.
4) Being integrative. BIOTraCes has been designed to work in an integrative way, which for example means that all research partners are involved in the various WPs and that there is a strong connection between the WPs. Moreover, there is co-production of knowledge with societal partners. Social Science and Humanities perspectives are well integrated within our project team. In addition to a natural science background, quite a few team members have a background in social science and/or humanities (eg. anthropology, political science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies). Besides doing transdisciplinary research, quite some case studies make use of art-based methods and cooperation with artists and designers.
5) Being innovative. BIOTraCes supports biodiversity innovations that combine nature-based solutions), social and institutional innovation in case studies and contributes to innovation of governance approaches making them more transformative, integrative, inclusive, equitable, adaptive and pluralistic.