The EU has developed ambitious policies and regulations to halt biodiversity loss resulting from intensive use of forests and land and climate change. Reversing the decline of biodiversity requires safeguarding existing biodiversity and fostering the adaptive capacity and resilience of the ecosystem. SafeNet relies on a portfolio of complementary tools to develop strategies and solutions to protect and foster biodiversity, while considering the need to manage forests for climate change mitigation, wood and ecosystem service provisioning. SafeNet integrates cutting-edge methods in biodiversity monitoring and mathematical modelling with massive remote sensing and species datasets to better understand the climate change induced shifts in the distributions and migration of genes, species, communities, ecosystems under different climate and forest and land use scenarios. This will allow the prioritization and implementation of anticipatory conservation and management measures, including the protection of corridors among the network of primary and old-growth and other ecologically valuable forests. SafeNet implements a multi-actor approach and engages key stakeholders, including policymakers, forest practitioners, regional and national authorities, certification bodies, and forest-value chain stakeholders, in regional Living Labs developed in case study areas covering four biomes across Europe, and a European level Policy Lab. Stakeholders will co-create solutions with researchers to develop sustainable strategies for real landscapes and innovate EU-level strategies and policies to reconcile conservation goals. Methodologies and scientific advances developed by SafeNet, as well as the transdisciplinary team’s expertise in mathematical biology, remote sensing, forest economy and ecology, environmental conflict management, policy analysis and science-policy interaction, and stakeholder engagement and dissemination-outreach, ensure the success of SafeNet and its impact.

MARBLES will use a novel and systematic approach to access and exploit marine microbial biodiversity for sustainable bioprospecting to discover microbial consortia and bioactive molecules for application in aqua- and agriculture and in the clinic. MARBLES' ecology-based bioprospecting strategy will focuses on unique host-microbe interactions in marine environments, including marine sponges, microalgae and fish, which rely on their microbiomes and microbial natural products for disease resistance. Partners’ existing microbial collections and new ones generated during MARBLES will be harnessed for the discovery of novel natural products and synthetic microbial communities. For this, MARBLES will use a systems-wide genomics approach to uncover the bioactive agents in disease-suppressive microbiomes. Also, MARBLES will explore host- and microbe-derived chemicals that elicit production of bioactive compounds, as elicitors to revitalise drug screening. The deliverables will be microbes and consortia and bioactive natural products, their derivatives and elicitors, which can be harnessed to fight infectious diseases in the agrochemical and aquaculture industries and in healthcare. Besides highly innovative, the approaches will be cost-effective and will offer advantages from both environmental and health perspectives in comparison to existing alternatives. The sustainable production of bioprotectants will increase the effectiveness of fish production - reducing the pressure on harvesting wild fish - and aid the transition of the crop agriculture sector towards bio-based and circular solutions. MARBLES will work closely together with a panel of SMEs and large companies from the EU aquaculture, crop protection biotechnology and health sectors. MARBLES fully complies with the Nagoya and Cartagena Protocols, and aims to make major contributions to the UN sustainable development goals, SDG 2, 3, 12, 13 and 14, as well as to current UN processes (BBNJ, DSI, SynBio)

The GuardIAS project is an ambitious initiative aimed at transforming aquatic environment governance and management in Europe. Its primary goal is to align with the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the IAS Regulation, focusing on mitigating the impacts of invasive alien species (IAS) on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health. GuardIAS plans to utilize advanced science, technology, and artificial intelligence to develop innovative tools and methodologies. These tools will be instrumental in preventing, detecting, eradicating, and managing IAS. The project is set to advance through interdisciplinary collaboration, integrating data from various sources to create comprehensive IAS impact profiles and management strategies. A significant aspect of GuardIAS is stakeholder engagement and societal involvement. This will be achieved through Citizen Science initiatives and innovative engagement strategies (such as serious games and BioArtBlitz events), aiming to involve the wider community in addressing IAS challenges. GuardIAS will also establish robust solutions for IAS management at multiple governance levels, from local to international. The project will include the development of beyond-the-state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies, such as nano-coatings for marine vessels to prevent IAS spread and eDNA approaches for efficient detection. Additionally, GuardIAS will conduct macroecological and biogeographic analyses to assess IAS risks under various future scenarios, including climate change. The project's comprehensive approach, encompassing science, technology, and community engagement, positions it as a key player in the EU's efforts to preserve biodiversity and protect ecosystems from the growing threat of invasive species. GuardIAS is not only a response to current environmental challenges but also a proactive step towards sustainable management and conservation of aquatic environments in Europe.

WaterLANDS aims to enable an upscaling of the restoration of wetlands. Socio-economic factors, insufficient stakeholder engagement, lack of government commitment, lack of funding and inadequate exchange of knowledge of restoration methods have all been identified as barriers to successful restoration. Consequently, most restoration has been modest in scale, has occurred mainly where there is a single landowning or responsible organisation, and has often been undertaken principally for reasons of conservation. WaterLANDS will work to overcome these barriers. It includes both Action and Knowledge Sites, the former being the object of restoration upscaling, and the latter a source of best practice experience and knowledge. To provide for local support and sustainability, it will aim for the co-design of restoration with the on-going engagement of communities and stakeholders. It will investigate best practice in ecological restoration which meets both biodiversity and social objectives and for which restoration trajectories are specific to the physical and cultural context of the Action Sites. It will propose supportive governance structures appropriate to this process and to local and national circumstances. It will identify business models, economic incentives and international funding sources and tailor or direct these resources for each site. The project will pull this expertise and knowledge together in a co-creation work package. Process-indicators will be developed to enable on-going assessment of restoration success in terms of ecosystem services, socioeconomic embedding and financial sustainability, to ensure wide-scale restoration which catalyses scalability beyond the life of the WaterLANDS project.

Europe is on an ambitious path to becoming climate neutral by 2050, aiming to cut 55% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030. Transport is a sector where so far it has proved harder to reduce emissions, while being one of the main energy users and source of emissions. Transport sectors such as aviation heavily depend on high energy density fuels, for which sustainable biofuels are the best near term low-carbon renewable alternative. Biofuel production based on algae is being considered as a main clean energy alternative and one of the most promising solutions. However, there are several challenges that hinder development and application of algae-based biofuel, ranging across the entire value chain. SUSTEPS main overall objective is to improve key knowledge, identify systemic constraints and opportunities, and propose solutions for the scaling up of a sustainable algae-based biofuel value chain. It aims to contribute to cost-effective and more sustainable large-scale production of sustainable algae-based biofuels by developing and validating a bio-refinery concept that efficiently produces sustainable biofuel from non-food/feed microalgae via CO2 fixation from high-emission facilities and through feeding on nutrient-rich wastewater, thereby minimising biomass production costs and utilising harmful CO2 emitted from energy-intensive activities. The process will be coupled with green hydrogen to be used in upgrading of microalgae-based fuel, and smart integration of processes that also produce value-added chemicals, valorising all side streams effectively. Based on international collaboration, SUSTEPS will build a more efficient, less costly CO2-to-biofuels process, identifying systemic constraints, opportunities and solutions for scaling up the value chain of algae-based sustainable biofuels which will support the development of best practices and concepts along the entire value chain and accelerate the scale-up of sustainable biofuels worldwide.