Launched in June 2024, the Horizon Europe-funded project: Fostering European Lakes Restoration by Nutrient Removal, Recovery and Reuse: Integrated Catchment and In-lake Scale Approach (FERRO) – brings together scientists, engineers, and environmental experts from across Europe to develop innovative, nature-based, and circular solutions to reduce nutrient pollution in freshwater ecosystems.
Eutrophication, caused by excessive nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen that enter lakes and reservoirs, remains one of the most pervasive threats to freshwater bodies. These excess nutrients often originate from agricultural runoff and wastewater discharges, resulting in algal blooms, oxygen depletion, and biodiversity loss.
FERRO addresses these challenges by working at both catchment scale and in-lake level, aiming not only toremove harmful nutrients, but also to recover and reuse them – aligning with Europe’s goals for circular economy and sustainable water management.
With a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, FERRO combines natural science, engineering, economics, and policy to develop scalable restoration strategies adaptable across Europe’s diverse lake regions.
The FERRO consortium
FERRO unites seven partners from six European countries, each contributing unique expertise to the project’s holistic approach:
Together, these organisations form a powerhouse of knowledge, experience, and innovation in the fields of limnology, hydrology, environmental policy, circular resource use and communications.
Pensoft’s role in FERRO
As the leader of the Communication and Dissemination Work Package #2, Pensoft plays a key role in ensuring that FERRO’s results and insights reach the widest possible audience. The responsibilities include the development and maintenance of the project’s visual identity and digital presence, managing media relations, producing public outreach materials, and facilitating knowledge exchange between scientific, policy, and stakeholder communities. Pensoft also supports the strategic dissemination of scientific outputs and policy-relevant findings, ensuring alignment with the project’s broader impact goals.
FERRO marked its first anniversary with a successful General Assembly meeting held in Leipzig, Germany, between 20th and 22nd May. Over the three-day meeting, the project partners gathered to reflect on the progress achieved during the first year, align their visions for the project’s future, and collaboratively plan the next phases of implementation
As the project entered its second year, the Leipzig meeting served as a moment to evaluate initial findings, refine methodologies, and strengthen engagement with stakeholders at local, regional, and EU levels. The outcomes will guide the FERRO consortium in its continued efforts to advance lake restoration across Europe.
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Stay tuned for more updates as the FERRO project continues to develop and implement its solutions for healthier lakes and more sustainable nutrient management across Europe!
Officially started on 1 June 2025, the newly-funded Horizon Europe project GREEN TALENT is to run for 4 years with the overall objectives to unite 17 academic, public and private sector partner institutions from 9 European countries, and the United States.
The project’s goal is to develop the capacity of organisations and pathways to combat climate change and biodiversity loss, and support secondments across these countries, fostering international collaborationin research and innovation (R&I), as well as public and private decision-making.
Grounded in the EU’s comprehensive ERA Policy Agenda, the GREEN TALENT initiative has ambitious plans to enhance professional developmentin the field, providing Green talents with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience through group mentoring activities, job shadowing, and networking events.
During its implementation, the project has planned to establish four demonstration hubs in Malta, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria, which will host 45 secondments, acting as collaborative spaces between representatives of academic and non-academic sectors.
“GREEN TALENT is about empowering a new generation of innovators, practitioners, and communities to respond to the urgent and interconnected challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.
To succeed, we need innovation in its broadest sense – embracing not only new technologies, but also collaboration, knowledge exchange, behavioural change, and new financing mechanisms. By strengthening capacity and excellence across academia, business, and practice, we are building the partnerships and platforms needed to scale impactful solutions.
GREEN TALENT establishes four national hubs – in Malta, Cyprus, Greece, and Bulgaria – that will build on recent regional successes to foster cross-sector collaboration addressing climate change and biodiversity loss through nature-based solutions.
These hubs will foster collaboration among stakeholders at local and national levels, while engaging with European and international partners to enable mutual learning, inform best practices, and scale successful interventions beyond national contexts.
“GREEN TALENT strengthens Europe’s ability to lead the green transition by investing in people, fostering inclusive innovation, and delivering measurable progress toward climate resilience and biodiversity recovery,”
Launched to support the green transition, GREEN TALENT will implement ongoing follow-up and assessment measures to ensure the long-term impact of its training activities. These efforts will enable participants to continuously refine their skills and effectively apply newly acquired competences within their home institutions.
All training materials will be openly accessible via a newly developed GREEN TALENT Capacity-Building Platform. In addition to comprehensive learning resources, the platform will showcase case studies, support peer learning, and host an Exchange Forum to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-sector collaboration.
By equipping research and innovation talents with practical skills and fostering international cooperation, GREEN TALENT aims to drive meaningful progress toward climate resilience and biodiversity preservation.
Pensoft’s role at GREEN TALENT:
Pensoft will lead the project’s Work Package 7: Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation. The primary objectives of the WP are the creation of a distinct brand identity, spreading knowledge through sustainable outreach strategies to facilitate knowledge exchange between academia and non-academia by organising events and workshops, while encouraging collaboration across GREEN TALENT’s Demonstration Pilots through shared success stories and highlighting secondees’ achievements.
Funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 101217375, GREEN TALENT (Building Capacity and Partnerships for Systemic Solutions to the Climate and Biodiversity Crises).
Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the EU nor the REA can be held responsible for them.
A recent study published in the open-access journal African Invertebrates provides insights into the life history and behaviour of the endemic Cape autumn widow butterfly (Dira clytus), a species endemic to South Africa.
In the study, Silvia Mecenero of the Lepidopterists’ Society of Africa and Stephen Kirkman of Nelson Mandela University examine the species’ developmental stages and responses to environmental conditions, with implications for conservation efforts.
By rearing the subspecies Dira clytus clytus in controlled conditions, the researchers documented the butterfly’s complete life cycle, from egg to adult.
Photographs of the life stages of Diraclytusclytusa adult b eggs c, d newly hatched larva e first instar larva (three days old) f first instar larva preparing to moult (nine days old) g, h second instar larva i third instar larva j fourth instar larva k, l fifth instar larva m fifth instar larvae huddling together in a big group n pre-pupal form o, p pupa.
Two distinct pupation and adult emergence phases were identified over a period of a few months, influenced by cold temperatures, suggesting that environmental cues play a role in triggering these developmental events. The fact that two broods were found in a matter of months is interesting, because in the wild this species breeds only once a year.
The findings indicate that Dira clytus clytus could show some phenological plasticity in its response to climate change, by changing its timing of pupation and the number of broods within a year.
Such flexibility may not always be beneficial to butterflies, as shifts in phenology could lead to mismatches with the availability of their host plants. However, Dira clytus clytus is a generalist that feeds on a variety of grasses and may therefore be more adaptable to changes in its phenology.
The study was published as part of a commemorative collection of articles published in honour of the late ecologist Prof. Stefan H. Foord.
Original study
Mecenero S, Kirkman SP (2025) Life history and behavioural observations during the rearing of Dira clytus clytus (Linnaeus, 1764) (Insecta, Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae), with notes on implications for climate change adaptation. African Invertebrates 66(1): 65-72. https://doi.org/10.3897/AfrInvertebr.66.138082
At the Pensoft’s stand, delegates learned about the scientific publisher’s versatile open-access journal portfolio, as well as related publishing services and the Horizon project where Pensoft is a partner.
Here’s a fun fact: the University of Bologna is the oldest one still in operation in the world. It is also etched in history for being the first institution to award degrees of higher learning.
This year, the annual event themed “Biodiversity positive by 2030” took place in the stunning Italian city of Bologna famous for its historical and cultural heritage, in a way building a bridge between the past of European civilisation and the future, which is now in our hands.
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At the Pensoft’s stand, delegates learned about the scientific publisher’s versatile open-access journal portfolio of over 30 journals covering the fields of ecology and biodiversity, as well as other related services and products offered by Pensoft, including the end-to-end full-featured scholarly publishing platform ARPHA, which hosts and powers all Pensoft journals, in addition to dozens other academic outlets owned by learned societies, natural history museums and other academic institutions.
In addition to its convenient collaborative online environment, user interface and automated export/import workflows, what ARPHA’s clients enjoy perhaps the most, are the various human-provided services that come with the platform, including graphic and web design, assistance in journal indexing, typesetting, copyediting and science communication.
Visitors at the stand could also be heard chatting with Pensoft’s Head of Journal development, Marketing and PR: Iva Boyadzhieva about the publisher’s innovative solutions for permanent preservation and far-reaching dissemination and communication of academic outputs that do not match the traditional research article format.
For example, the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal was launched in 2015 by Pensoft as an open-science journal that would publish ‘unconventional’ research outputs, such as Grant proposals, Policy briefs, Project reports, Data management plans, Research ideas etc. Its project-branded open-science collections are in fact one of the Pensoft’s products that enjoys particular attention to participants in scientific projects funded by the likes of the European Commission’s Horizon programme.
Another innovation by Pensoft that easily becomes a talking point at forums like ECCB, is the ARPHA Conference Abstract (ACA) platform, which is basically a journal for conference abstracts, where abstracts are treated and published much like regular journal articles (a.k.a. ‘mini papers’) to enable permanent preservation, but also accessibility, discoverability and citability. Furthermore, ACA has been designed to act as an abstracts submission portal, where the abstracts undergo review and receive feedback before being published and indexed at dozens of relevant scientific databases.
On Wednesday, delegates also got a chance to hear the talk by renowned vegetation ecologist at the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Editor-in-Chief at the Vegetation Classification and Survey journal: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dengler. He presented findings and conclusions concerning neophytes in Switzerland, while drawing comparisons with other European countries and regions.
🌱 Presence of #neophytes is not necesarily problematic, and can actually have positive effect, concludes recent research on 🇨🇭Swiss #grasslands diversity.
At this year’s ECCB, Pensoft took a stand as an active Horizon project participant too. At the publisher’s booth, the delegates could explore various project outputs produced within REST-COAST, SpongeBoost and BioAgora. Each of these initiatives has been selected by the European Commission to work on the mitigation of biodiversity decline, while aiming for sustainable ecosystems throughout the Old continent.
In all three projects, Pensoft is a consortium member, who contributes with expertise in science communication, dissemination, stakeholder engagement and technological development.
Having started earlier this year, SpongeBoost is to build upon existing solutions and their large-scale implementation by implementing innovative approaches to improve the functional capacity of sponge landscapes. The project is coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and will be developed with the active participation of 10 partnering institutions from seven countries across Europe.
In the meantime, since 2022, the five-year BioAgora project has been working towards setting up the Science Service for Biodiversity platform, which will turn into an efficient forum for dialogue between scientists, policy actors and other knowledge holders. BioAgora is a joint initiative, which brings together 22 partners from 13 European countries led by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE).
4/🧵 The @HorizonEU project @BioAgoraEU is to create an efficient platform for dialogue between #scientists, policy actors & other knowledge holders.
Still, REST-COAST, SpongeBoost and BioAgora were not the only Horizon projects involving Pensoft that made an appearance at ECCB this year thanks to the Pensoft team.
On behalf of OBSGESSION – another Horizon-funded project, Nikola Ganchev, Communications officer at Pensoft, presented a poster about the recently started project. Until the end of 2027, the OBSGESSION project, also led by the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and involving a total of 12 partnering organisations, will be tasked with the integration of different biodiversity data sources, including Earth Observation, in-situ research, and ecological models. Eventually, these will all be made into a comprehensive product for biodiversity management in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems.
On Tuesday evening, the CO-OP4CBD (abbreviation for Co-operation for the Convention on Biological Diversity) team: another Horizon Europe project, where Pensoft contributes with expertise in science communication and dissemination, held a workshop dedicated to what needs to be done to promote CBD activities in Central and Eastern Europe.
On the next day, scientists from the EuropaBON consortium: another project involving Pensoft that had concluded only about a month ago, held a session to report on the final conclusions from the project concerning the state and progress in biodiversity monitoring.
📌Eastern Europe and countries outside Europe underrepresented in the @EuropaBon_H2020 network, reports Christian Langer at #eccb2024bologna.
At SpongeBoost, Pensoft is to take charge of the project’s identity, while building a strong network, and providing comprehensive knowledge and well-packaged information.
In recent years, Europe’s landscapes have become the victims of extreme events – ranging from floods to droughts – that have caused considerable damage to nature as well as human society.
With the aim to tackle such severe circumstances, the newly-started Horizon Europe-funded project SpongeBoost will be working towards protecting and promoting natural sponge landscapes.
Within SpongeBoost, the functional capacity of sponge landscapes is to be enhanced through building upon existing solutions and their large-scale implementation, but also through innovative approaches.
Pensoft is among the partnering institutions within SpongeBoost and serves as the leader of Work Package #5: “Communication, dissemination, exploitation, showcasing best practices and networking”. WP5 will aim to contribute to the project’s mission by building the overall project identity, building a strong network, and providing comprehensive knowledge and well-packaged information to targeted stakeholders.
The project
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme with a budget of EUR ~3 million, the project is coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and will be developed with the active participation of 10 partnering institutions from seven countries across Europe. Having been officially launched in January 2024, SpongeBoost is to wrap up in December 2027.
The project is part of the EU mission “Adaptation to Climate Change”, whose task is tosupport EU regions, cities and local authorities in their efforts to build resilience against the impacts of climate change.
“The protection and revitalisation of wetlands, particularly through peatland rewetting and river floodplain restoration, plays a central role in this,“
says project manager Mathias Scholz from the UFZ.
SpongeBoost held its official kick-off meeting in late February (2024) in Leipzig, Germany.
To officially kickstart the project, the first consortium meeting took place on 21-23 February in Leipzig, Germany. The kick-off meeting saw all 10 partnering institutions meet in person to officially lay the foundation of a promising collaboration that will flourish over the next four years.
The joint mission before the newly formed consortium is to enhance the natural sponge function of wetlands and soils in Europe, aligning with EU policies for climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and biodiversity. To achieve that, the project plans to employ both bottom-up and top-down approaches, which will foster networking and synergy at the regional and EU level.
SpongeBoost will focus on five main objectives over the next four years:
Conduct a comprehensive literature review to create a standard reference catalogue for securing and enhancing sponge functions in adaptation to climate change. This catalogue will integrate social, economic, technical, and ecological effects and serve as a widely used resource across Europe and beyond.
Build a knowledge base on existing approaches for enhancing sponge functions, and highlight the reasons for success or failure. The goal is to enable regions and communities to replicate effective transformative solutions. Meanwhile, the consortium is to facilitate networking initiatives with other projects and identify suitable pilot sites for monitoring long-term success using the results of previous projects.
Work on the implementation, tests, refinement, and adjustment of best practices and innovative solutions through EU-wide case studies. The goal is to enhance climate resilience to extreme events and enable upscaling from local to EU levels.
Develop a roadmap with practical tools to empower stakeholders, drive transformative change, and integrate sponge solutions into regional, national and European climate adaptation processes to achieve EU Green Deal targets.
Connect communities and compile online resources for climate change adaptation. The goal is to facilitate access and combine a library of tools for restoration and share research findings on soil, water, and groundwater interconnection for replication across Europe.
In addition to leading the “Communication, dissemination, exploitation, showcasing best practices and networking” work package at SpongeBoost, Pensoft is to also assist the Environmental Action Germany (DUH) in the implementation of different innovative communications methods and ideas meant to support the project’s goals.
As part of the creative communication strategy, DUH will take the lead in the development of a “SpongeBooster superhero” character. By creating such a character that will be also featured in comics, the team will translate complex concepts into clear visuals and engaging narratives, thereby shaping the project’s visual identity and letting non-experts join the discourse. The Sponge Booster is to serve as an innovative method to disseminate project knowledge and address barriers with humour while fostering dialogue and avoiding potential conflicts.
International Consortium
The SpongeBoost project brings together a team of 10 partners from seven European countries, spanning research, policy, and management fields. The consortium members, who individually represent various restoration projects, will join forces and expertise to promote collaboration, knowledge exchange and synergies across European regions, to ultimately instil a lasting positive impact on sponge restoration for climate change adaptation.
Stay tuned for more project information on the SpongeBoost website coming soon at: www.spongeboost.eu/. In the meantime, you can follow SpongeBoost on social media on X and Linkedin.
As a leader of the Work Package 6: “Dissemination, Multi-stakeholder outreach and synergies,” Pensoft is tasked to build an involved community around OBSGESSION.
Pensoft is to contribute to the OBSGESSION consortium with expertise in science communication by taking care of stakeholders engagement, thereby supporting its goal of improved terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity monitoring. As a leader of the Work Package 6: “Dissemination, Multi-stakeholder outreach and synergies,” Pensoft is tasked to build an involved community around OBSGESSION.
Terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity has been declining at an alarming rate due various factors such as intensification of anthropogenic activities and climate change.
Coordinated by the Finnish Environmental Institute (Syke), OBSGESSION aims to reveal the drivers of biodiversity loss, pinpoint important indicators of ecosystem health and inform sustainability policy.
The OBSGESSION consortium at the kick-off meeting in January 2024 (Tuusula, Finland).
The project officially kicked off with the first consortium meeting in Tuusula, Finland, between 30th January and 2nd February.
For the coming four years, the joint mission before the newly formed consortium is to integrate biodiversity data sources, such as Earth Observation, with in-situ research, and also cutting-edge ecological models. These will all be made into a comprehensive product for biodiversity management in both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems.
The project will also spearhead an innovative approach for assessing Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and their resilience to errors. Through purposely propagating error into biodiversity estimates and comparing the resulting models with ones using correct estimates, the EBV case studies aim to investigate model uncertainties and identify approaches that are more sensitive. Thus, they will inform policy and management about the optimal EBVs, and their key thresholds for conservation.
To demonstrate the implementation of the techniques and methodologies they are to develop within the project; and to respond to the needs of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the consortium will focus on six distinct pilot activities:
Investigating and predicting biodiversity change in the European Alps: multi-scale, multi-modal and multi-temporal investigation using remote and in-situ data integration.
Improving habitat classification models: going beyond state-of-the-art in terms of accurate high-resolution mapping of Europe’s habitats, powered by machine learning.
Forecasting ecosystem productivity under disturbances & climate change:incorporating remote sensing EBVs to assess metrics of ecosystem structure and health.
Supporting temperate and boreal forest protection & restoration: through assessing ecosystem conditions via eDNA & image spectroscopy.
Monitoring freshwater ecosystems under disturbances & climate change: utilizing the novel Thematic Ecosystem Change Indices (TECIs).
Ecosystem functioning of the Kokemäenjoki estuary – assessing freshwater & transitional water quality incorporating both in-situ and Earth Observation data.
Through its pilot studies, methodological assessments, data stream integration, and investigating land use cover changes across Europe, OBSGESSION will help improve our understanding of ecosystem vulnerability across a range of specific habitat types, identify driversand pressures to ecosystem change and improve planning and prioritization of restoration measures.
“At Pensoft, we are eager to be part of the bright OBSGESSION consortium and look forward to offering our expertise and experience in raising awareness towards the project and contributing to the high impact of the resulting outputs, methodologies and policy recommendations that aim to strengthen our understanding of biodiversity change,”
says Gabriela Popova, science communicator at Pensoft and leader of the Work Package #6: “Dissemination, Multi-stakeholder outreach and synergies” at OBSGESSION.
International Consortium
The interdisciplinary OBSGESSION consortium consists of 11 partnering organisations from seven European countries, who bring diverse expertise spanning from remote sensing and Earth observation, to freshwater ecosystems, programming and science communication. Many partners represent acclaimed scientific institutions with rich experience in collaborative EU projects.
Guest blog post by Cássio Cardoso Pereira, Daniel Negreiros, and Geraldo Wilson Fernandes
A recently published study by Pereira et al. in the prestigious journal Nature Conservation says that the solution for climate warming and environmental crises is not solely about curbing temperature by planting trees or even by changing our energy matrix. It is about changing our perspective on ourselves and the way we do things. There is a long list of things we have to do if we want to be successful. One important thing is changing policy actions.
This is a reflection of increased public attention to climate change at the expense of other biodiversity issues and may have contributed to a much higher number of UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COPs) linked to climate change (27 COPs) compared to those about biodiversity (15 COPs) to this date. Governments should not solely focus on curbing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. This asymmetry between environmental agendas can harm not only biodiversity, but also climate change, as environmental issues are inexorably interconnected.
Web search interest for environmental topics around the world from 2004 to the present according to Google TrendsTM. Comparison of intergovernmental bodies (A), conventions (B) and terms (C) related to climate (blue) and biodiversity (red). Values represent the percentage of maximum (peak popularity). IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; IPBES: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; UNFCCC: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In a society with broad and deep environmental problems, government, private sector and non-governmental efforts should include other dimensions of nature in their agenda. Biodiversity, the unique variety of life on our planet, underpins our cultural, economic, and social well-being. The destruction of ecosystems undermines nature’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and protect us against extreme weather, thus accelerating climate change and increasing our vulnerability to it. Therefore, it is puzzling that policy-makers are still over-focused on the climate component.
We argue here that the climate change issue is important and urgent. However, this problem cannot be solved without considering the picture as a whole. In this way, changes in land use must be integrated into climate models so that we can achieve a more detailed representation that increases our ability to predict how local impacts of change in land use will affect the future of biodiversity at a global level.
We emphasise that this path is necessary, but it is still winding. There is much to pass on to society in terms of ecological awareness. The spotlight is on climate change, at least in part, because everyone already knows how to get involved in climate action in an accessible way. However, the degradation of biodiversity can be difficult to notice, especially for someone who does not get out and experience nature regularly. Therefore, a big question is how much we still have to learn about the various ecosystems across the planet, their delicate balance and interaction with their wider environment, and indeed the climate.
Reference:
Pereira CC, Negreiros D, Barbosa M, Goulart FF, Dias RL, Melillo MC, Camarota F, Pimenta MA, Cruz M, Fernandes GW (2023) Has climate change hijacked the environmental agenda? Nature Conservation 53: 157-164. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.53.110961
As an expert in science communication, dissemination and exploitation, Pensoft joins TRANSPATH for transformative changes at consumer, producer and organisational levels.
As an expert in science communication, dissemination and exploitation, Pensoft joins the Horizon-funded project TRANSPATH to identify leverage points and interventions for triggering transformative changes at consumer, producer and organisational levels.
Why TRANSPATH?
The magnitude of biodiversity loss and climate crisis has grown exponentially in recent years, which will inevitably lead to serious consequences at a global scale. Although reversing the degradation of ecosystems and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are top priorities for the European Union, science and policy communities are united in the belief that conventional policies alone are not enough to halt biodiversity loss or mitigate climate change.
In order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, whilst simultaneously reshaping people’s relations with nature, we need transformative changes in our economies and societies urgently.
How?
TRANSPATH (short for TRANSformative PATHways for synergising just biodiversity and climate actions) – a new European Union-funded project, plans to satisfy this need by accelerating diverse transformative pathways towards biodiversity-positive and climate-proofed societies, with sensitivity to social-cultural contexts and rights.
TRANSPATH will identify leverage points and interventions for triggering transformative changes at consumer, producer and organisational levels. A research team, consisting of leading academics, science-policy experts, and early-career professionals, will directly engage with diverse stakeholders, who affect and are affected by trade regimes and associated ‘greening’ mechanisms.
As a leader of WP5: Dissemination, outreach and catalysing transformative pathways, Pensoft is responsible for providinga dissemination and communication strategy, as well as taking care of the project branding and website. In addition, the Pensoft team is to organise joint activities with other projects or initiatives on transformative change and related topics.
What?
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, TRANSPATH was launched on 1st November 2022 and will be running until October 2026. The official kick-off of the project took place online and was followed by an in-person kick-off meeting of all consortium members on the 2nd and 3rd February 2023 in Wageningen, the Netherlands.
For the next four years TRANSPATH will be focussing on the design and integrated assessment of a suite of transformative pathways that hold potential to accelerate shifts in unsustainable patterns of extraction, production, consumption and trade. The project’s mission will be achieved by four objectives:
Set up a Policy Board and Science-policy-practitioner Labs at multiple scales to engage and jointly deliberate on implications of diverse visions and pathways of change.
Identify and characterise leverage points for diverse contexts that lead to positive synergies between biodiversity, climate and trade domains.
Integrate and customise European and global pathways by considering coupled biodiversity-climate actions and critical leverage points.
Identify and test alternative interventions at global and European scales that can trigger transformative change at the level of consumers, producers and organisations.
TRANSPATH will bring together and advance several strands of recent research, which hold potential for triggering and accelerating transformative changes that can restrain biodiversity loss and climate change.
The project will draw on diverse contexts in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa and Latin America, to engage with policy makers and practitioners, individuals, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and multinational corporations.
In addition, policy packages and other interventions will be designed to facilitate the emergence of leverage points at different scales of action in ways that change the decision-making framework of everyday choices.
These interventions take into account the synergies and trade-offs of actions across multiple individuals and locations, as well as the role of incentives and political obstacles to implementation.
The EU project will provide a suite of Transformative Pathways along with a Toolbox of Transformative Interventions to trigger and enable these pathways. The Transformative Navigation Toolkit assists practitioners in enabling and navigating these pathways, acknowledging that determining what constitutes a ‘transformative pathway’ is also a product of an iterative and adaptive process that emerges and evolves over time.
Whom?
The TRANSPATH project brings together leading academics, science-policy experts, and young professionals from different social-cultural origins across Eastern and Western Europe, Africa and Latin America. Represented by nine countries and twelve nationalities, the consortium comprises a diverse range of scientific disciplines in environments, economics, and social sciences.
Dedicated to ensuring sufficient engagement from local to global levels in this project, the experts are focused on integrated and inclusive deliberation that is essential for identifying, legitimising, and navigating transformative pathways.
You can find more about the project on the TRANSPATH website: transpath.eu. Stay up to date with the project’s progress on Twitter (@TRANSPATH_EU) and Linkedin (/transpath-project).
Apart from communication, dissemination and data management tasks, within SOLO, Pensoft is also responsible for the development of the key project output: the SOLO platform
As the foundation of our food systems, healthy soils are essential for life on Earth. They provide clean water and habitats for biodiversity while contributing to climate resilience and support our cultural heritage and landscapes and are the basis of our economy and prosperity.
Soils are under multiple pressures, including climate change, urbanisation, pollution, overexploitation, nutrient mining and biodiversity loss with the European Commission estimating that under current management practices, it’s between 60% and 70% of our soils that are unhealthy.
funding an ambitious research and innovation programme with a strong social science component;
putting in place an effective network of 100 living labs and lighthouses to co-create knowledge, test solutions and demonstrate their value in real-life conditions;
developing a harmonised framework for soil monitoring in Europe;
raising people’s awareness on the vital importance of soils.
Achieving those objectives requires a direct involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, bringing together multiple perspectives in ecological, environmental, economic and social contexts.
The project
SOLO launched in December 2022 and will be running until November 2027 with the support of 5 million euros provided by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.
SOLO will identify current knowledge gaps, drivers, bottlenecks, and novel research and innovation approaches to be considered in the European Soil Mission research and innovation roadmap.
The project aims to create a knowledge hub for soil health research and innovation that will last beyond the project’s lifespan by establishing strategic partnerships and by implementing a participatory and transparent process.
The project will implement Think Tanks, one for each Mission objective, with the aim of co-creating knowledge and identifying the knowledge gaps, drivers, bottlenecks, and novel approaches in terms of research and innovation.
The Think Tanks will consist of groups of experts who will together tackle the issues regarding soil health, set out in the EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’. Together with an open digital platform, based on Pensoft’s ARPHA Writing Tool, the Think Tanks will function as an operational tool for implementing a participatory process that will last beyond SOLO’s lifespan.
The project will engage users at regional, national and European level to support the co-design of comprehensive research and innovation roadmaps for the Soil Mission and identify knowledge gaps and novel avenues for European soil research and innovation in the context of the Soil Mission objectives.
Furthermore, SOLO will identify, describe and assess the drivers and barriers to soil health in Europe, develop dynamic roadmapsas effective research and innovation agendas for the Soil Mission with a particular focus on the integration and synthesis across sectors.
The 3rd Global Soil Biodiversity Conference (March 2023; Dublin, Ireland) saw several talks by researchers involved in the SOLO project, while communication materials provided additional information to the delegates who stopped by the Pensoft exhibition stand.
You can find out more about the project on the Soils for Europe (SOLO) website: soils4europe.eu. Stay up to date with the project’s progress on Twitter (@soils4europe) and LinkedIn (/Soils-for-Europe).
The innovative open-access digital publishing platform provides a forum for open review and co-creation of the European Mission Soil research and innovation roadmaps in support of more integrative and encompassing policies aiming to achieve improvements in soil health and a thriving environment for soil-related research in Europe.
The consortium
SOLO’s consortium comprises a European network of established professionals from the academic and non-academic fields from various backgrounds, who have agreed to work collaboratively to fulfil the objectives set by the EU Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” which aims to create a shared research and innovation vision that will accelerate Europe’s trajectory towards sustainable soil management and restoration as part of a wider, green transition in rural and urban areas.
Apart from science communication, Pensoft is also tasked with the development and maintenance of the CANOPY platform, whose aim is to support policymakers and national and regional authorities
Dedicated to bridging the gap between science, policy, industry and society, Pensoft is striving to maximise ForestPaths’ impact in meeting Europe’s climate and biodiversity targets
The backdrop
The European Union (EU) has set ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% in 2030 and to become climate neutral by 2050, which require urgent and major societal and economic reforms.
In the meantime, the EU also aims to protect biodiversity and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, while using natural resources to mitigate climate change.
ForestPaths – a recently started Horizon Europe project will help meet Europe’s climate and biodiversity targets by providing clear policy options that enable European forests and the forest-based sector to contribute to climate change mitigation, while conserving their biodiversity and sustaining the services they provide to people.
As an experienced science communicator, Pensoft is dedicated to maximising ForestPaths’ impact. The team will do so by means of tailored communication, dissemination and exploitation strategies aimed at sharing the project’s results with relevant stakeholder groups.
Furthermore, Pensoft is tasked with the development and long-term maintenance of the CANOPY platform, whose aim is to support policymakers and national and regional authorities by granting them access to the knowledge and scientific evidence acquired within ForestPaths long after the project is finalised.
Building on these options, the project will collaborate with policymakers and key authorities through a series of Policy labs, where the partners will co-design policy pathways, which will then be analysed with next-generation integrated assessment techniques.
Lastly, ForestPaths will apply this framework for an all-round assessment of the climate mitigation potential of European forests and the forest-based sector.
Aerial view of a forest road.
The ForestPaths legacy
ForestPaths’ policy pathways – as well as their supporting information and evidence – will be made openly available through the project’s policy-support platform CANOPY, hosted on the ForestPaths website.
The platform, whose launch is scheduled for 2026, will feature an interactive policy analysis tool explaining the policy pathways and showcasing their implications, as well as providing detailed assessment results and policy recommendations in an easily accessible manner. Its long-term mission is to become the go-to place for easily accessible assessment results and policy recommendations.
“We are excited to be doing our part for Europe’s fight for climate neutrality by extending ForestPaths reach to policy, industry and society at large! As an open-access scientific publisher engaged in about 50 environmental research projects, Pensoft echoes ForestPaths’ aim to support the EU’s climate neutrality transition through what we are sure will be a prolific international research collaboration,” says ForestPaths’ WP7 leader Anna Sapundzhieva.
