In order to inform global action on biodiversity and climate protection, IPBES, IPCC and corresponding national processes were created to improve the science-policy interface (SPI) between knowledge holders and decision makers. Nevertheless, there are large differences in the capacities and experiences among countries in supporting and engaging in IPBES and IPCC processes. In addition, the knowledge systems on climate and biodiversity remain fragmented despite thematic and procedural overlaps in both domains. The aim of this project is to systematically evaluate and process existing experiences to provide other countries and stakeholders guidance and inspiration for SPI development. RESPIN will assess existing potentials and barriers to foster SPI processes around biodiversity and climate change to provide an improved access to information for decisions at EU, national and subnational levels. This project will: (1) empower knowledge holders to enhance the representation across regions, knowledge systems and stakeholder groups in SPI processes, considering the interlinkages between biodiversity and climate; (2) empower decision makers at different levels across the globe to uptake the knowledge and capacity building provided by IPBES and IPCC; (3) develop future perspectives for SPI engagement at EU level, enhancing EU capacities to incorporate IPBES and IPCC functions in their knowledge procedures and funding provisions; and (4) develop and disseminate online capacity building programs to up-scale best practices and translate relevant project outputs for key stakeholders and decision-makers across the globe. In sum, RESPIN will develop new SPI formats for integrated IPBES and IPCC processes, provide training and digital guidelines and develop action agendas with strategic partners to ensure integrated SPI processes on global, national and subnational levels.

The object of the DAFRALI project is to reinforce the capacity of 8 higher education institutions (HEI) in Morocco, Congo-Kinshasa and Senegal in terms of governance and strategy applied to food safety and food securityThe DAFRALI project will successively provide the following results:-autodiagnostic of the autonomy of each HEI in the field of food safety and food security,-autoevaluation of the strategy of each HEI,-adaptation of governance and analysis of the main dangers by each HEI with external stakeholders (enterprise, NGO, public services),-elaboration and decision by the HEI on its strategy and its pluriannuel action plan (PAP)-each HEI plans its PAP, execute it and correct it-exploitation of the results (web site, booklets, book) and diffuse it among Maghrebian and Subsaharian Francophone HEI Three approaches of the DAFRALI project are going to impact the partners universities :-the use of a methodology to adapt the governance and to formulate a strategy of education and research which takes into account the autodiagnostic of the autonomy, the autoevaluation of the strategies and the study of major societal challenges.-the conception of strategies and PAP. Thus, it is important to understand if the changes are possible and how it could be lead in each HEI. Thus, specific sessions on the management of changes will be organised, with the participation of the HEI top management. -Implement the PAP following the method plan-act-correct. Each university will be in a position to correct its PAP annually.

Phenology is a term used to describe the seasonal timing of animal and plant behaviour. Examples of phenological events are when plants first flower in the spring or when birds migrate to the tropics for the winter. In the dry regions of the tropics, phenological behaviour of plants seems to be primarily linked to water availability, rather than to changes in temperature as for example in temperate areas like the UK, but determinants of tropical phenology are poorly understood. Yet, elucidating the phenological behaviour of plants, including in the dry tropics, is essential to measure the flow of carbon into and out of ecosystems. This contributes in turn to understanding the links between plants and the atmosphere and ultimately to predicting the potential impact of climate change on vegetation and vegetation impacts on the climate. Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Environment Programme have made it clear that more data are needed on the phenological patterns of vegetation in the tropics, in order to improve predictions on the future of the climate, both in the tropics and globally. To do that, we need to study the phenology of tropical vegetation over broad geographic areas. Hypothetically this can be accomplished using satellite observations, but in fact, the data available from satellites are inadequate: clouds often block a space-based view of the vegetation and the spatial resolution of the images is too coarse (imagine a very fuzzy photograph). The latter means that it can be very difficult to distinguish between trees leafing out versus grasses, with important implications for the amount of carbon flowing into or out of an ecosystem. This is particularly relevant in dry tropical regions where mixed ecosystems with trees and grass are widespread. We also have a poor idea of how phenological timing varies over geographic regions with different patterns of rainfall. Ground-based observations of phenology are therefore needed to complement satellite observations and provide a more accurate picture of vegetation behaviour. Historically, ground-based observations have been difficult to implement at a broad geographic scale in a consistent way, because they are labour intensive and difficult to do in a consistent manner. However, new technologies point a way forward to overcome these issues and advance multi-site and multi-layer (tree and grass) observations across tropical regions. Specifically, cameras can be installed that take photographs every day of the same patch of vegetation over the course of months and years. Such images can be efficiently processed using new computational techniques to quantify when a given patch of vegetation, or ecosystem, flushes new leaves, and whether those leaves are on trees or the ground layer. The proposed project, PhenoChange, will link up global experts on camera-based phenological monitoring in Brazil and the USA with a team of British and African scientists that are leading pioneering, ground-based studies of tropical dry vegetation across sub-Saharan Africa. The project team will install and monitor cameras at six representative sites across dry tropical areas in Brazil and sub-Saharan Africa. This will result in the first comparable, ground-based dataset of vegetation phenology in the dry tropics across multiple continents. The research team will analyse these data to address some key unanswered questions around the timing of tree versus grass phenology in tropical dry vegetation and how this varies over gradients of rainfall. The results will have important implications for models that predict future climate change and its interaction with vegetation change. Finally, the results will lay the groundwork for future grant applications that will deepen and expand UK expertise on vegetation in tropical dry ecosystems.

The ecosystems of the dry tropics are in flux: the savannas, woodlands and dry forests that together cover a greater area of the globe than rainforests are both a source of carbon emissions due to deforestation and forest degradation, and also a sink due to the enhanced growth of trees. However, both of these processes are poorly understood, in terms of their magnitude and causes, and the net carbon balance and its future remain unclear. This gap in knowledge arises because we do not have a systematic network of observations of vegetation change in the dry tropics, and thus have not, until now, been able to use observations of how things are changing to understand the processes involved and to test key theories. Satellite remote sensing, combined with ground measurements, offers the ideal way to overcome these challenges, as it can provide regular, consistent monitoring at relatively low cost. However, most ecosystems in the dry tropics, especially savannas, comprise a mixture of grass and trees, and many optical remote sensing approaches (akin to enhanced versions of the sensors on digital cameras) struggle to distinguish changes between the two. Long wavelength radar remote sensing avoids this problem as it is insensitive to the presence of leaves or grass, and also is not affected by clouds, smoke or the angle of the sun, all of which complicate optical remote sensing. Radar remote sensing is therefore ideal to monitor tree biomass in the dry tropics. We have successfully demonstrated that such data can be used to accurately map woody biomass change for all 5 million sq km of southern Africa. In SECO we will create a network of over 600 field plots to understand how the vegetation of the dry tropics is changing. and complement this with radar remote sensing to quantify how the carbon cycle of the dry tropics has changed over the last 15 years. This will provide the first estimates of key carbon fluxes across all of the dry tropics, including the amount of carbon being released by forest degradation and deforestation and how much carbon is being taken up by the intact vegetation in the region. By understanding where these processes are happening, we will improve our knowledge of the processes involved. W will use these new data to improve the way we model the carbon cycle of the dry tropics, and test key theories. The improved understanding, formalised into a model, will be used to examine how the dry tropics will respond to climate change, land use change and the effects of increasing atmospheric CO2. We will then be able to understand whether the vegetation of the dry tropics will mitigate or exacerbate climate change, and we will learn what we need to do to maintain the structure of the dry tropics and preserve its biodiversity. Overall, SECO will allow us to understand how the vegetation of the dry tropics is changing, and the implications of this for the global carbon cycle, the ecology of savannas and dry forests, and efforts to reduce climate change. The data we create, and the analyses we conduct will be useful to other researchers developing methods to monitor vegetation from satellites, and also to those who model the response of different ecosystems to climate and other changes. Forest managers, ecologists and development practitioners can use the data to understand which parts of the world's savannas and dry forests are changing most, and how these changes might be managed to avoid negative impacts that threaten biodiversity and the livelihoods of the 1 billion, mostly poor, rural people who live in this region.