To restore and protect ocean ecosystems within a sustainable blue economy, in line with the objectives of the Mission ‘Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030’, we urgently need new business models for regenerative aquaculture, informed by best scientific evidence on environmental impacts and developed in partnership with societal stakeholders. To encourage adoption, such practices must be technically, operationally, and economically viable for ocean farmers, with clear benefits to ecosystem services, community resilience, market potential and job creation. C-FAARER will deliver a roadmap and guidance, co-designed with stakeholders, to support ocean farmers in the Atlantic and Arctic Sea basin to develop community-driven business models for regenerative ocean farming and policymakers to take enabling actions. C-FAARER builds on prior EU projects, reviewing evidence on socio-economic and environmental impacts and successful community business models to establish a robust case for adoption. Working with ocean farmers and coastal communities at sites in Norway and Ireland, we will analyse technical, operational, economic, environmental, and social needs and create guidance on developing site-specific community-led business plans. We will co-design feasibility reports and evidence-based business plans with members of the Norwegian Seaweed Association cluster of 80+ ocean farmers, replicate lessons via a new Irish Seaweed Association and ensure long-term sustainability through a new Community of Practice on the established Connecting Nature Enterprise Platform. Policy recommendations will highlight barriers, supports and investments needed from local, national and EU authorities to strengthen and scale regenerative community-led aquaculture in the Atlantic and Arctic Sea basin. Clustering and engagement with Ocean Mission projects and partner networks will identify opportunities to embed community-led business models for regenerative aquaculture in future Mission actions.

NetworkNature+ will continue NetworkNature’s legacy as a ‘network of networks’ and expand it to engage new audiences in addressing the societal challenges outlined by the EU. It will maintain and enhance the established evidence/demand/policy-driven multi-stakeholder platform for NBS, strengthening partnerships and fostering new relationships around a clear strategic framework for action, underpinned by an updated EU Research & Innovation NBS Roadmap and complementary analysis of policy opportunities for integrating NBS at EU, Member State, regional and local level in view of EU 2030 policy targets and EU Missions. NetworkNature+ will provide scientific NBS insights across selected policy priorities and different European and international contexts. This will guide our work around dialogue, stakeholder interactions, knowledge sharing and awareness raising, resulting in products, standards and advisory services that support the growing NBS community of innovators, practitioners and developers. A targeted training and capacity building programme will promote a step change from siloed, project-based thinking towards an integrated, systemic and stakeholder-led approach to NBS planning, design and investment, while leveraging the role of ecosystems as critical infrastructure that support regenerative economic activities and help reduce biodiversity loss. We will enable regional and Europe-wide transdisciplinary collaboration to answer identified R&I needs for NBS via knowledge exchange between EU-funded NBS R&I projects and stakeholders, together with skills development and capacity building for target groups from science, policy, business and society. International collaboration with key strategic partners (e.g. UNCBD, IPBES, IPCC, UNFCCC, UNEP, UNDRR) and selected regions will enable European expertise to inform the global NBS discourse, contributing to the EC’s vision of “a stronger Europe in the world” and supporting new investments for NBS.

MAIA applies to the subtopic a) of the HORIZON-CL5-2021-D1-01-03 Topic. MAIA will act as an impact multiplier by providing social structures, technological and outreach activities to accompany, potentiate and help maximise the impact of climate research projects funded under Horizon Europe. MAIA constitute the response from a group of coordinators and core partners from seven H2020 precursor projects in climate change research (BINGO, BRIGAID, CLARITY, Connecting Nature, DRIVER+, PLACARD and RESCCUE). In these projects, driven by the EC’s advice to identify synergies and spark collaboration, we liaised and detected a clear need for increased connectivity and a more robust approach to synergies management as means to unlock more meaningful and impact-oriented interactions. MAIA pivots around connectivity as a key enabling factor for an effective outreach. Therefore, we are envisioning specific actions for enhancing i) the connectivity of existing communities (consolidation and activation of a Pan-European community of problem owners, solution providers, and enablers); ii) the connectivity of knowledge and technological infrastructure (creation of the MAIA Portal); and iii) the connectivity of the EU climate research (coordinating an EU climate change research Cluster). Communication and Dissemination activities of the EU climate change research projects will be reinforced and amplified by our active outreach campaign, aiming towards the democratisation of climate knowledge. Moreover, MAIA develops a comprehensive cross-project exploitation-support programme. MAIA also addresses awareness raising, the strengthening of the science-policy and science-civil society interfaces, and the support for climate action and sustainable behaviours through several actions dealing with active dialogue supported through community engagement activities and the use of SSH.

It is now widely acknowledged that to make adequate and timely progress in the direction of biodiversity mainstreaming, three critical aspects – previously overlooked or insufficiently handled by supranational policies – need to be emphasised and further explored in their transformative potential: 1) The establishment and operation of bottom-up and especially City- and Community- driven initiatives, which may adequately complement the Country level National Sustainable Development Plans and Green Growth Strategies; 2) The introduction and refinement of appropriate methodologies, and capacity-building activities, to enable the engagement of all key societal stakeholders (notably including market players, citizens and local government actors) in concerted actions to restore the most compromised elements of the natural environments; 3) Continuous work on enabling nature-based solutions by identifying the connections, and addressing the disconnects, between biodiversity conservation and social, economic, and technological challenges. To meet the requirements of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and of the recent Commission proposal for a Nature Restoration Regulation, the UNP+ consortium proposes a 3-year long action research plan, engaging 11 academic partners and 5 European Cities as “Lighthouse” and “Greening” testbeds, ready to share knowledge and scale up from their ongoing experiences in UNP design and NBS implementation & scaling, to a next-generation strategy for urban and periurban ecosystem transformation, mainstreaming biodiversity, ecosystem services, and natural capital in urban policies and economies through adopting a whole of society approach.

Currently there is a range of Nature-based solutions (NBS) emerging mostly with strong public funding elements, but a market for NBS has not yet emerged. While mostly small scale NBS are implemented as pilots for urban resilience to climate change the full range of economic and societal benefits for NBS are not systematically understood and mapped and are not sufficiently used to back the business and investment case for NBS. The numerous benefits may include mitigation and adaptation to climate change (including the reduction of urban heat island effect and flood mitigation), reduction of pollution, improved biodiversity and ecosystem services, increased well-being for citizens, including physical and mental health or recreation, social cohesion, and community building. While effort for climate change mitigation and adaptation are increasing, the role of NBS in this context is not well understood. In particular, risk reduction of NBS for the private and public insurance sector has not yet been systematically included in economic valuation of NBS. Holistic understanding of benefits and benefit flows however are important for the society including upscaling and maximising the benefits achievable with NBS and activation financing for NBS. The overall project aim of Invest4Nature is to gain a better understanding of the economic and financial performance of NBS, considering their role for mitigation as well as climate risk reduction, to promote upscaling and investments in NBS, and to accelerate market uptake. The project has a strong involvement of stakeholders to co-produce solutions, having several NBS Living Labs and a wide NBS community (including project developers, decision makers and funding and financing institutions) at hand, co-producing new evaluation and financing approaches as well as tools, covering NBS in different contexts (e.g., urban, rural, coastal). This is the basis for empowering stakeholders and create and structure a future NBS market.