On 17 March, 2023, the Research Executive Agency (REA), the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV) and the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) organised a “cluster” event in Brussels with the 11 projects funded under the Framework Transformative Change for Biodiversity and selected strategic and cross-cutting initiatives such as BioAgora and the EU Business & Biodiversity Platform.
The projects under the Framework Transformative Change need to support the implementation of the actions and commitments under the EU Biodiversity strategy that contribute to transformative change. Also, an important role is to make people aware and “convince” those who are rather sceptical towards the biodiversity crisis.
SELINA was also invited to attend the event being recognised as a project relevant to those presented during the event. Coordinators and partners of the different participating projects got to know SELINA through a speed dating process which encompassed six 5-minute pitch sessions to present and discuss linkages and relevant collaboration opportunities.
The following key linkages between SELINA and the other projects emerged:
Many projects (e.g. Biotraces, BioNEXT) improve the use of or develop transformative change approaches that could help SELINA analyse the “seeds of change”.
Some projects are looking for leverage points to transformative change (e.g. Planet4B, Transpath, Clever). SELINA also looks for leverage points for mainstreaming biodiversity. Information exchange might be interesting.
Many projects are building networks or learning and action alliances (e.g BioTrails), or looking for networks. SELINA could utilise that when establishing the Communities of Practice (CoP).
Many projects are working around the impacts of human activities on biodiversity (e.g. Bamboo, SUSTAIN) or searching for evidence that biodiversity underpins every aspect of human life (e.g. BioNext, BioValue). SELINA can contribute by providing input through the MAES explorer tools and also exchange information on indicators for ecosystem conditions.
A key message from the event was that REA would highly support joint actions between the participating projects such as joint deliverables, joint tools and joint events.
