Nature-based solutions (NBS) are governance techniques and models that directly and cost-effectively benefit both nature and humans. Despite the progress in NBS design and implementation, the socio-political challenge is that NBS are often tailored for the privileged, their design is expert-led, and their implementation hampered by institutional and administrative inertia. NBS have not been able to support a just transformation of habits for sustainability, and fail to incorporate non-human actors or include marginal and vulnerable humans as true beneficiaries of these solutions. COEVOLVERS goes beyond the state of the art by introducing a co-evolutionary approach, which offers a radically new view for NBS design and implementation by looking at NBS at the interface of technological and biological spheres and considering full co-creation as an interplay not only between the stakeholders but also between human and nonhuman actors. To accomplish this, COEVOLVERS explores through seven Living Labs (LL) across Europe the situational and place-based conditions around the socio-politics of NBS design and implementation. The purpose is to alter the socio-ecological conditions to provide governance models and techniques, motivation structures and practices for more inclusive NBS and resilient communities. COEVOLVERS helps develop already existing, incipient, and emerging NBS with local actors by means of participatory and digital transdisciplinary methodologies. COEVOLVERS will support the growth of novel capabilities, entrepreneurship, and renewal capacity for a just transition. COEVOLVERS engages and informs policy- and decisionmakers to ensure their contribution to transformational impacts. We integrate co-created knowledge and preparedness to act with actual governance and decision-making structures to ensure implementation and critical evaluation together with the continuous reconfiguration and development of models, techniques and tools.

The European Union aims to reduce net carbon emissions by 55% in 2030, and become climate neutral by 2050. These goals can only be met if it boosts carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems, preferably while fostering socio-environmental co-benefits such as conserving biodiversity, adapting to climate change, and safeguarding socio-economic and cultural values. Both the IPCC and the IPBES have emphasised the great potential of ecosystem restoration and related nature-based solutions (NbS) for addressing the challenge. wildE introduces ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as an innovative restoration approach to create climate benefits while also addressing other socio-environmental needs. The project gathers a multi-disciplinary team of leading European experts to develop a research and innovation programme addressing the climate-biodiversity nexus in tight association with the socio-economic dimension of large-scale restoration. The team will also project scenarios to assess Europe’s rewilding potentials under diverse land-use and climate change futures. wildE will (i) generate comprehensive case-comparative data on European rewilding trends and outcomes, (ii) quantify the net social, economic and environmental benefits, synergies and trade-offs related to rewilding and alternative land-use options; (iii) develop cutting-edge projections for future land use and climate scenarios; and (iv) develop tangible and readily accessible decision-support and management guidelines to enable policymakers, conservation managers, communities, and the private sector to co-construct climate-smart rewilding strategies as effective NbS for meeting the EU’s climate and biodiversity targets. Embedded within an ambitious stakeholder engagement, communications programme, wildE research will enable climate-smart rewilding as operational large-scale NbS to effectively foster the natural capacity of Europe’s ecosystems for climate change mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity support.

The proposed project enhances networking activities between research institution in Widening country (Institute of Forest Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, IFE SAS) and top-class counterparts at the EU level (Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, The University of Eastern Finland and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). The project builds on networking for excellence through knowledge transfer and exchange of best practices between involved institutions. The major result will be raising reputation, research profile and attractiveness of IFE SAS. Project implementation will enhance IFE SAS staff management capacities, administrative skills and scientific capabilities in the use of novel remote sensing technologies (RST) in forest disturbance ecology (FDE). The project proposes establishment of initial network and development of a new joint research project in novel RST applications in FDE. Rigorous analyses of severe insect-induced disturbances using novel RST will be carried out in test areas representing different forest and climate types: mountain forests in Slovakia and boreal forests in Finland and Sweden. We will integrate in situ UAV and drone acquired remotely sensed data, existing multitemporal geospatial information and field data, particularly data on bark beetle population density, visible infestation symptoms linked to outbreak phases, and tree physiology parameters measured using electronic dendrometers or sapflow meters. The combined dataset will be used to develop new tools for landscale-level early bark beetle attack identification and for designing bark beetle infestation risk assessment model. We will draw on the latest advances in drone technologies and image analytical tools, including deep Convolutional Neural Networks based machine learning techniques and Artificial Intelligence algorithms. We expect to obtain important scientific results and contribute new knowledge to this scientific field.

SIMRA seeks to advance understanding of social innovation (SI) and innovative governance in agriculture, forestry and rural development (RD), and how to boost them, particularly in marginalised rural areas across Europe, with a focus on the Mediterranean region (including non-EU) where there is limited evidence of outcomes and supporting conditions. These objectives will be achieved by: 1. Developing systematic frameworks: a) theoretical - for improved knowledge of the complexity of SIs and its dimensions, and its impact on unfolding territorial capital; b) operational - based on a trans-disciplinary coalition (researchers and practitioners) to advance understanding of preconditions and success factors (e.g. instruments, incentives etc.) for implementing/operationalizing SI. 2. Creating a categorisation of SIs which encompasses the specificities in terms of social priorities, relationships/collaborations etc. and serves as an instrument to explore reasons why regions with similar conditions display diverging paths and to 'turn diversity into strength’. 3. Creating an integrated set of methods to evaluate SI and its impacts on economic, social, environmental, institutional and policy dimensions of territorial capital. 4. Co-constructed evaluation of SIs in case studies across the spatial variation of European rural areas, considering which components of territorial capital foster and, or mainstream RD. 5. Synthesis and dissemination of new or improved knowledge of SIs and novel governance mechanisms to promote social capital and institutional capacity building and inform effective options/solutions for shaping sustainable development trajectories. 6. Creating collaborative learning and networking opportunities and launching innovative actions at different/multiple scales, with continuous interactions among researchers, ‘knowledge brokers’ and stakeholders to foster and mainstream SI, leaving a durable legacy.