BIONEXT will develop knowledge, tools, and guidance for mainstreaming biodiversity into policy making and provide concrete options on how to initiate, accelerate and upscale biodiversity relevant transformative change in society. It will deliver an innovative Nexus Modelling Framework that will integrate scenarios and pathways in a co-production process with stakeholders, while modelling interlinkages between biodiversity, water, food, energy, transport, climate, and health, and enabling simulation of the impacts of indirect and direct drivers on biodiversity. Through its database of transformative change cases, BIONEXT will involve policy- and decision-makers and allows them to explore the concept of just transformative change. Plausible futures and desirable, nature-positive visions for Europe and multiple just transition pathways will be co-created in workshops and focus groups taking place in various cities around Europe. With the involvement of diverse stakeholders, the BIONEXT Pathways App will be delivered as a novel decision support tool that allows users to explore transformational building blocks, for formulating policies and implementation pathways for the biodiversity nexus. The results will contribute to science brokerage, capacity building and networking to IPBES, EU policymakers, and civil society.

The aim of EKLIPSE is to establish an innovative, light, self-sustainable EU support mechanism for evidence-based policy on biodiversity and ecosystems services open to all relevant knowledge holders and users, and to hand over this mechanism to the wider knowledge community by the end of the project. The mechanism will build on existing science-policy-society interfaces and be further refined via iterative evaluation and learning throughout the project. The mechanism will provide trustworthy evidence for policy and society upon request and will make the knowledge community more able to provide synthesized and timely evidence by providing a platform for mutual learning and engagement. All relevant knowledge holders and users will be actively encouraged and supported by the project team through their individual strengths and interests, thus ensuring targeted contributions. Many institutions have already expressed their interest in the “Network of Networks” of potential contributors to the EU mechanism’s activities. EKLIPSE will directly support the further development of this network and ensure the involvement of relevant stakeholders in the following key areas: (a) jointly developing and setting up a business plan for the mechanism after the end of the project (WP1), (b) conducting joint evidence assessments using established and innovative methods to support policy and societal needs (WP3), (c) jointly identifying research needs and emerging issues (WP4), actively building the Network of Networks and (d) encouraging societal engagement (WP6). This will be supported by an interim governance structure, a strong communication component, including a Science-Policy-Society Forum, and an independent formative evaluation to ensure learning (WP2).