Project description
Innovations to enhance natural capital and biodiversity
Integrating the value of natural capital into organisational decision-making is crucial for combating biodiversity loss. The EU-funded A-TRACK project aims to develop and scale up innovations related to biodiversity and ecosystem services to support the European Green Deal. The project will concentrate on establishing information pathways, compiling natural capital accounts, enhancing the assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services footprints, advocating for natural capital accounting in businesses and fostering financial innovations. Its objectives include bolstering natural capital and biodiversity, enhancing the competitiveness of European companies, and promoting well-being through improved ecosystem services. A-TRACK will unite an interdisciplinary consortium of leading stakeholders and prioritise integration, synthesis and comprehensive engagement.
Objective
The overall goal of A-Track is to consolidate and mainstream activities to accelerate transformation in organisations, such that, by end of project, a critical mass of businesses, financial institutions, and governments, integrate the value of natural capital in their decision-making, helping to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. In doing so, A-Track will contribute to delivery of the European Green Deal. A-Track builds on existing initiatives and best practice to develop, pilot, test, demonstrate and scale innovations in this space. Specifically, A-Track will: (1) develop and demonstrate the use of robust information pathways that facilitate flows of biodiversity information for use in business and financial decisions, and the compilation of public and private sector natural capital accounts; (2) strengthen the life cycle assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services footprints for products and organisations, integrating and further mainstreaming these with natural capital approaches and materiality assessment practices; (3) mainstream and advance natural capital assessment and accounting in businesses and their integration in decision-making across key sectors and business functions; (4) facilitate and incentivize the adoption and scaling of nature-positive business models; (5) nurture financial innovations to scale nature-positive finance based on reliable natural capital data and practice. Emphasis is placed on integration, synthesis and wide engagement across this work. This will deliver wider impacts, in Europe and beyond (through global value chains), in terms of enhanced natural capital and biodiversity, enhanced competitivity of European businesses in the new nature economy, and improved wellbeing derived from enhanced ecosystem services. A-Track brings together an intersectoral and interdisciplinary consortium of leading players who are involved in many of the key related front-runner initiatives across this space, ensuring appropriate synergies.
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HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
2400 Mol
Belgium