Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA are pleased to announce the 2017-2018 international call for research proposals on:

Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

The Call will address the two following major (non-exclusive) priorities:

• Development and application of scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services across spatial scales of relevance to multiple types of decisions
• Consideration of multiple dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem servicesin biodiversity scenarios

 The call aims at supporting proposals that explicitly address a scenario dimension, taking into account the following definition of scenarios: “Scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services are the outputs of the combination of scenarios of indirect drivers and direct drivers — such as land use change, invasive alien species, overexploitation, climate change or pollution — and models of impacts of these drivers on biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

25 funding organisations from 23 countries are joining this call:  Argentina, Austria, Belgium^#, Brazil (State of Sao Paulo only), Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United States of America.  ^# confirmed for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation; decision for the federal level still pending

Some Funding organisations may also define specific funding rules allowing the funding of teams from low-income and lower-middle income countries. This information is detailed in the Funding organisations’ rules. If you would like to use this opportunity, please make sure to contact your Funding Organisation Contact Point.

The Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA partners together with the European Commission (EC)* have provisionally reserved more than 25 million Euros for this call. (* EC contribution is still tentative, pending on the signature of the Grant Agreement of the BiodivScen project)

Scientific teams are invited to form international consortia comprising research groups from at least three countries participating in the call.  Consortia are highly encouraged to involve at least two teams from two different EU Member States or H2020 Associated Countries to be eligible for EC funding (here: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey).  Proposals should also clearly demonstrate the added value linked to the international nature of the projects and to the level of collaboration between teams from different countries.

Proposals will be evaluated according to criteria of (i) scientific excellence, (ii) policy relevance and societal impact (which includes stakeholder engagement), and (iii) quality and efficiency of the project implementation. For more information on the objectives and possible approaches for stakeholder engagement in research projects, please check the BiodivERsA Stakeholder Engagement Handbook.

A two-step process will apply, with a mandatory pre-registration of projects at the first step and submission of full proposals at the second step. Pre-registrations and full proposals (to be written in English) must be submitted electronically with the Electronic Proposal Submission System (EPSS). The link to the EPSS will be available on the Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA websites.

Each research Partner in a project must comply with the eligibility criteria and rules of its funding organisation.

Deadline for pre-registration (mandatory): Friday 01 December 2017, 17:00 CET (local time in Brussels)

Deadline for submission of full-proposals: Friday 09 March 2018, 17:00 CET (local time in Brussels)

MORE INFORMATION

For more information on the call, please consult the call documents on the Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA websites.

You will also find there the lists of Funding organisations’ rules and Funding organisation Contact Points (FCPs).

If you are looking for a Research Partner for your Project or for a Project to join, please do not hesitate to use the BiodivERsA/Belmont Forum Partner Search Tool.

For specific questions related to the budget, criteria and rules of your funding organisation, please consult your Funding organisation’s rules. Each research team is encouraged to contact its FCP before submitting a proposal.

For general information on the call, please contact the Theme Programme Office (TPO): Sophie GERMANN, Scientific project manager, sophie.germann@agencerecherche.fr

For technical questions regarding the submission, please contact the TPO or the EPSS technical helpdesk: Taavi Tiirik, biodivscen@etag.ee