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.

 

 

Despite the significant amount reserved for this call, the strong response of the scientific community resulted in a high selection rate: 7% of pre-proposals and 25% of full proposals. Partner agencies are working on ways to improve the success rate in the future by managing the scope of the calls and the balance of budgets between countries. However, this result also clearly highlights the need for sustained financial support to transnational research projects in the field of biodiversity.

 

An analysis by theme and by country is in preparation, as well as a report profiling the successes and shortcomings of the call procedure, which will present some of the lessons learnt.

 

A common project initiation meeting will be organised in the second half of 2009, gathering principal investigators, members of their consortia and BiodivERsA partners.

 

It is hoped that the projects to be funded by this joint research programme will provide an opportunity for science to address some pressing policy and management questions in an innovative way and to help plan policy responses to challenges in the relationship between biodiversity functions and human activities.

 

Read also: Comment by the Chair of the evaluation committee Date: March 2009

 

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