The aim of BioValue is to leverage transformative change in spatial policymaking, planning practices and infrastructure development. Doing so, it upscales opportunities for valuing biodiversity in support of EU strategic actions. Transformative change is a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values. Biodiversity loss is one of the persistent problems Europe is facing. But transformative change in spatial planning can help biodiversity to be better valued while developing new ways to reach sustainable development goals.

Spatial planning policy and decision-making take place at different levels, from local to global. Therefore, many are the players who can drive transformative change in spatial policy and planning processes – researchers, the public, policy makers, businesses and third sector organisations.

The project aims to safeguard and increase biodiversity by focusing on key steps of the mitigation hierarchy, addressing indirect drivers, renewed EU finance strategy within spatial planning, and better articulated instruments for mainstreaming biodiversity concerns into other sectors across different levels of governance.

To have access to the BioValue official website click here. https://biovalue-horizon.eu/project/

Acronym: TRAGOF

Forests are complex territories involving multiple interactions between social and ecological systems that affect each other, influencing and being influenced by the social, economic and political context. Non-natural forest fires represent “pathologies” that usually result from a complex dynamic of problematic interactions in social-forestry systems, that have been occurring over time in Portugal. To address this complexity and the non-linearity and uncertainties inherent to forest fire risk management, a transformative approach in the forest governance model is being sought. This approach can be understood as a key strategy to reverse the unsustainable patterns of use and management of forest territories connected to the current increasing trend of severe fire events in Portugal. Monchique (case study) is located in southern Portugal and has extensive areas classified as “very high” risk of forest fires and has therefore been classified by the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) as a priority intervention area for Forest Fire Defence (DFCI, 2021). An expected outcome of the research is a critical and in-depth analysis of the current forest governance structure in Monchique, an identification of constraints and opportunities, as well as possible strategies to guide a transformative governance approach of fire risk forest territories. Such results will be consolidated and presented to stakeholders, scientific community and society in general through a scientific publication (paper), communications at Conferences and the dissemination of a Roadmap to enable its replication in others fire-prone forest in Portugal, Europe and elsewhere.