BiodivERsA Pan-European call for international research proposals on biodiversity and ecosystem services

BiodivERsA is a network composed of national organisations funding or managing research programmes on biodiversity across Europe. The objectives of this ERA-Net are to promote the cooperation between funding agencies in the field of biodiversity research and to coordinate research programmes at strategic and management levels to eventually develop and implement joint activities.

This year, the BiodivERsA partners have decided to launch a joint call for research proposals on biodiversity and ecosystem services, planned to be launched in October 2010, with a closing date in the end of January 2011.

 

The BiodivERsA Pan-European call for international research projects on biodiversity: linking scientific advancement to policy and practice addressed the three following themes (across all ecosystems and organisms).

a) Global change and biodiversity dynamics

 

In the call, emphasis was laid on the link between scientific excellence and relevance to policy and practice. The proposals were accordingly evaluated against criteria on science, policy relevance and project management.

 

Fifteen funding partners from twelve countries took part in the call. The funding partners had agreed on a joint evaluation procedure that also allowed them to comply with national rules. A joint project-monitoring scheme has also been organized and any problems arising with the projects will be tackled by the call steering committee.

 

The two-stage evaluation process was completed within 6 months:

 

-In March, 182 outline applications were received.

-In April, the 24 international experts of the evaluation committee sifted the pre-proposals and recommended 47 of them to be invited to submit full proposals.

-Full applications were received in June and sent for external peer review over the summer.

-In September, the evaluation committee evaluated and ranked the 47 proposals.

-In October, the steering committee recommended 9 proposals to be funded and an additional 3 were included in a complementary list, subject to the availability of sufficient funds in some countries.

-Negotiations between the concerned agencies were completed by the end of November and gave way to the process of formal approval by the funding partners.

 

Thanks to a significant effort by NERC (UK) to increase its budget and to the flexibility of MEEDDAT (France) and BMBF (Germany), 12 projects are in a position to be funded.

 

The fact that three agencies did not spend any of their reserved budget indicates that no political criteria interfered with the funding decision, which strictly followed the ranking established by the evaluation committee. As a result, part of the total announced budget was not used.