The project Past-to-Future (P2F) aims at radically advancing our knowledge of past climatic conditions to better understand Earth’s climate response to different kinds of forcing, with considerable focus on potential abrupt climatic transitions and the crossing of tipping points. To this end, P2F will integrate information from paleoenvironmental proxy data, from Earth system models (ESMs), and from rigorous theoretical approaches. Being able to reconstruct past climate evolution is a necessary step for enhancing our capacity to look into the future and, therefore, extensive improvements of state-of-the-art ESMs are needed. So far, ESMs are mainly calibrated and validated with respect to the instrumental records of the last ~170 years of relatively stable climate, while the Earth’s longer-term history is characterised by an interplay of gradual climate change, variability and critical transitions between competing states, with profound impacts on climate subsystems, ecosystems, and civilisations. Understanding the leading dynamical processes and feedbacks and in particular improving our ability to model and anticipate critical transitions in the climate and ecosystems is key to project future climate change on spatio-temporal scales relevant for societies, ecosystems and the planet. In this context, P2F will critically advance our ability to understand and anticipate the main climatic and societal impacts of the ongoing climate crisis. Specifically, P2F will extend the reach of Earth System Models and demonstrate a step change in the model development cycle of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), by providing fully paleo-informed models for future projection and producing a portfolio of plausible future climate change scenarios that are constrained by documented past climate changes and abrupt transitions. Finally, P2F will efficiently disseminate research outputs and engage key stakeholders in dialogue to ensure appropriate synergies are at attained.

Accurate taxonomic knowledge and tools are needed to understand the drivers and impact of biodiversity decline. However, the field of taxonomy is severely hampered by a continuous decrease in capacity. With TETTRIs, we envision a transformative change in the field of taxonomy to build and sustain taxonomic research capacity through increasing knowledge and developing systems. TETTRIs will achieve this aim by creating joint knowledge in reference collections, training frameworks, and with innovative tools as well as by developing centralized resources providing access to an expertise marketplace, the taxonomic knowledge platform, and career paths. The core methodology for reaching these objectives includes co-creation with citizen scientists, and professionals in biodiversity hotspots. The open-access knowledge and systems built into TETTRIs, together with citizen scientists, will accelerate the integration and expansion of taxonomy in education, governance, and multidisciplinary research. This will ensure the long-term relevance of taxonomy as an instrumental science, necessary to halt European and global biodiversity loss, and ensuring ecosystems and their services are preserved and sustainably restored on land, inland water and at sea. TETTRIs builds taxonomic research capacity near biodiversity hotspots by networking natural history museums and other taxonomic facilities through bottom-up co-creation between 17 partners. The consortium includes the European Citizen Science Association and several of Europe's leading natural history museums, botanic gardens and universities unified under CETAF, the leading European voice for taxonomy and systematic biology. Impact throughout the EU and beyond is secured through involvement of associated initiatives such as DiSSCo and DEST, partners in third party projects, and key TETTRIs dissemination activities towards a new generation of taxonomists, citizen scientists, users in need of taxonomic knowledge, and decision makers

The Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) ProjectThe Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) Project has the overriding aim of accelerating the application of genomic science to enhance understanding of biodiversity, monitor biodiversity change, and guide interventions to address its decline. BGE coordinates and upscales DNA barcoding and reference genome generation in the context of European biodiversity. The Project develops synergies by aligning efforts and resources of the DNA barcoding and genome sequencing communities across the continent. The BGE objectives with derived ambitions: CAPACITY: To establish functioning biodiversity genomics networks at the European level to connect and grow community capacity to use genomic tools to help tackle the biodiversity crisis With the ambition to (a) Future-proof our networks on biodiversity genomics research, (b) lower access thresholds to biodiversity genomics research, and (c) promote co-creation and citizen engagement. PRODUCTION - To establish and implement large-scale biodiversity genomic data-generating pipelines for Europe to accelerate the production and accessibility of genomic data for biodiversity characterisation, conservation and biomonitoring With the ambition to (a) establish distributed and inclusive capacity, (b) build economies of scale and (c) connect previously disjoined resources to deliver relevant knowledge. APPLICATION - To apply genomic tools to enhance understanding of pan-European biodiversity and biodiversity declines to improve the efficacy of management interventions and biomonitoring programmes. With the ambition to (a) improve the use of biodiversity genomics data in science policy and (b) establish European-wide large scale biodiversity genomics research mechanisms. The BGE Consortium is comprised of 33 partners across 20 countries and brings together, for the first time at this scale, the two communities for barcoding and reference genome to implement its aspirational programme.

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) initiative. DiSSCo aims to bring together natural science collections from 175 museums, botanical gardens, universities and research institutes across 23 countries in a distributed infrastructure that makes these collections physically and digitally open and accessible for all forms of research and innovation. DiSSCo RI entered the ESFRI roadmap in 2018 and successfully concluded its Preparatory Phase in early 2023. The RI is now transitioning towards the constitution of its legal entity (an ERIC) and the start of its scaled-up construction (implementation) programme. The primary goal of the DiSSCo Transition Project is to ensure the seamless transition of the DiSSCo RI from its Preparatory Phase to the Construction Phase (expected to start in 2025). In this transition period, the Project will address five objectives building on the outcomes of the Preparatory Phase project: 1) Advance the DiSSCo ERIC process and complete its policy framework, ensuring the smooth early-phase Implementation of DISSCo; 2) Engage & support DiSSCo National Nodes to strengthen national commitments; 3) Advance the development of core e-services to avoid the accumulation of technical debt before the start of the Implementation Phase; 4) Continue international collaboration on standards & best practices needed for the DiSSCo service provision; and 5) Continue supporting DiSSCo RI interim governance bodies and transition them to the DiSSCo ERIC formal governance. The Project’s impact will be measured against the increase in the RI's overall Implementation Readiness Level (IRL). More specifically, we will monitor its impact towards reaching the required level of maturity in four of the five dimensions of the IRL that can benefit from further developments. These include the organisational, financial, technological and data readiness levels.

BiCIKL is a proposal that will initiate and build a new European starting community of key research infrastructures, establishing open science practices in the domain of biodiversity through provision of access to data, associated tools and services at (1) each separate stage of, and (2) along the entire research cycle. BiCIKL will provide new methods and workflows for an integrated access to harvesting, liberating, linking, accessing and re-using of sub-article-level data (specimens, material citations, samples, sequences, taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, figures, tables) extracted from literature. BiCIKL will provide for the first time access and tools for seamless linking and usage tracking of data along the line: specimens → sequences → species → analytics → publications → biodiversity knowledge graph → re-use.