Forests of the Congo Basin shelter an exceptional biodiversity, provide critical ecosystem services and support the livelihood of vulnerable communities. Under the pressure of global changes, these forested social and ecological landscapes are evolving. Climate change, deforestation, and degradation critically influence their biodiversity, in turn affecting the functions and services they provide, at local, regional and global scales. The purpose of CoForTips is to foster better management of the Congo Basin forests through a better understanding of the dynamics, regime shifts and tipping points of biodiversity and the resilience of forested social ecological systems (SES) and the construction of scenarios of biodiversity. The project will: I.Identify Tipping Points in the Forests of the Congo Basin SES, mapping biodiversity resilience, identifying stable states and tipping points focusing on tree communities and keystone wildlife species and identifying drivers and potential impacts of policy and management decisions on biodiversity and on the SES ability to provide and deliver ecosystem services. II.Construct Scenarios of Biodiversity, integrating social, economic, governance, ecological and geophysical processes in a platform able to simulate regional trajectories including sensitivity analysis and levels of uncertainty and incorporating feedback loops based on coping strategies developed by stakeholders as evidenced by locally relevant participatory modelled scenario; III.Foster Resilience, embedding the results of our research in the decision making process at the regional and national levels, through well defined impact pathways involving policy makers and the civil society since the inception of the project, through participatory construction of scenarios, fostering innovation in forest and biodiversity policy and management. The project will work under the umbrella of the Commission of Central African Forests (COMIFAC) and build upon the following previous projects: (a) ‘Consolidating the Observatory for the Forests of Central Africa’ (CEOFAC) (Congo Basin Forest Partnership and COMIFAC), (b) CoforChange (BIODIVERSA 2008), describing the dynamics of biodiversity in response to different climatic and anthropogenic change scenarios, (c) ‘Prospective study of the forests of central Africa by 2040’, identifying the drivers of change for the forests of the region, and (d) MAKALA project, for a sustainable management of the resource wood energy (EuropeAid). The results will be of interest to the regional partners but also to the European Union, as European countries are net consumers of African tropical timber, own most of the logging companies in the region, are highly concerned by the capacity of tropical forests to serve as carbon sinks, 4) strive to uplift the living standards of marginal communities (Lisbon declaration of the EU-Africa Summit), and 5) have a comittment to biodiversity conservation (Working Program on Forest Biological Diversity). By adopting a participatory, cross-sectoral, and multidisciplinary approach, we will ensure that our results and scenarios are embedded in the policy making process, paying close attention to the governance structure. We will enrol key stakeholders and leaders at every step of the project and secure a clear and direct communication of the research results among the involved stakeholders, closing the gap between knowledge production and action.

There is substantive evidence that the prevailing silo approach in public policy is threatening the materialization of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, approaches to research SDG interactions are in its infancy, and available ones fail to adequately incorporate the social and governance dimensions, which are instrumental in the implementation of sustainable development models. Likewise, managing real world SDG problems requires strong stakeholder engagement approach to find solutions matching countries capacities and their socioeconomic-physicalgovernance contexts. SDG-pathfinding aims to bridge some of these gaps, and develop novel tools and capacities support a sustainable development pathway for African countries that is adapted to the local contexts and priorities. We will pursue this goal by adopting a strong interand trans-disciplinary approach to: 1) Analyze multi-level governance structures and path dependencies; 2) Develop and test an innovative, online and participatory SDG scenario policy tool to support the development of inclusive and bottom up narratives and transformation pathways; and 3) Foster exchange and knowledge sharing to promote social learning and drive the change in mindsets required to match our ambitions for sustainability. We will implement our approach in two African SDG from hotspots from Senegal and South Africa. SDG pathfinding is an experiential and fully participatory process, and will engage participants through living labs in defining their desirable futures, anticipate potential trade-offs, and co-designing solutions within the chosen sustainability pathways. Main innovations: 1) the integration with a governance framework to unpack impediments and enablers for SDG implementation; 2) a flexible integration of the different participatory tools; 3) suitable to support the localization of the SDG agenda, and 5) can be implemented online approach in situations where face-to-face meetings are not possible.

It is state of the art that multi-model ensembles (MME) of future freshwater-related hazards of climate change (CC) (e.g. derived by driving a number of global hydrological models by the output of a number of climate models) are optimal for informing CC risk management. However, studies on how to best utilize MMEs (e.g. ISIMIP MMEs) in risk management are lacking. The main project goal is to co-develop methods for providing and utilizing MME data on freshwater-related hazards for risk and adaptation assessments at various spatial scales, and to provide data in a suitable way, in order to increase availability and applicability of information for different types of end-users, with a focus on how to address uncertainties. Furthermore, future research in the framework of ISIMIP is to be co-designed, focusing on uncertainty and water. Co-development of PUNI (Providing and Utilizing eNsemble Information) methods will be done jointly by global hydrological modelers, scientists investigating co-development methods and societal information needs, boundary organizations and stakeholders (end-users). They will all participate in three stakeholder dialogues at the global scale (end-user industries), transboundary scale (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), and river basin scale (Ebro). PUNI methods will be co-developed by testing alternative ways of presenting MME data in support of exemplary (participatory) CC risk assessments in each stakeholder dialogue in an iterative manner, based on MME data that are either available or generated specifically in the project in response to end-user input. Expected results include a handbook on PUNI methods and a web portal at UNESCO’s International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change where end-users from around the world will be able to access hydrological MME data for their region of interest for free and in a way that suits their needs, e.g. by selecting a hazard indicator for low flows as well as its spatial and temporal aggregation.

This project addresses the coproduction of climate-impacts knowledge, in a hands-on collaboration between scientists and users such as climate-adaptation-policy experts and other stakeholders. The project team boasts world-class experts in science-policy dialogue, cross-sectoral impacts research and research coordination, and scientific excellence in impacts modelling. The end product is an open climate-impacts service portal, ISIpedia, offering tailored access to state-of-the-art climate-impacts assessments and data, based on the cross-sectoral, multi-model simulations conducted within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP, www.isimip.org). ISIpedia’s development will integrate the full chain of climate-impact-service co-development, from research design and implementation, to delivery, with tasks fulfilled by the ISIMIP team, a Stakeholder Engagement Team (SET), and the ISIpedia Assessment and Editorial Team (AET). ISIpedia users may include climate adaptation planners e.g. involved in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and implementation practitioners, regional knowledge hubs, trans- and interdisciplinary scientists including climate economists, and regional climate experts from the private sector such as (re-)insurance companies. Four key tasks will be undertaken: 1) stakeholder-supported selection of focus topics and development of the scenario design for the next ISIMIP simulation round; 2) co-development of societally- and user-relevant impacts indicators based on the (bio-)physical projections generated within ISIMIP, such as “number of people affected”, “economic damages” or indicators related to the Sustainability Development Goals; 3) provision of input data and coordination of cross-sectoral impact-modelling activities within ISIMIP, and 4) establishment of a new online platform ISIpedia to provide informed access to simulation data, regional, cross-sectoral impact assessments based on ISIMIP data, and co-developed indicators.

FORCES aims towards establishing an evidence-based nature-based solutions (NbS) framework by implementing innovative forest-based solutions. FORCES seeks to develop ecosystem-based adaptation actions that simultaneously preserve high levels of biodiversity, ensure sustaining natural capital and the flow of ecosystem services while protecting communities’ livelihoods and contributing to climate change mitigation. Considering that combined actions on climate, biodiversity and societal challenges cannot efficiently be achieved without multiple actors’ engagement in local actions, FORCES’s strategy is to develop local innovation actions, provide methods and tools to support their extended use and assess their potential global impacts. Thus, FORCES will: i) conduce trans-disciplinary research based on new developments in environmental and social sciences underpinned by stakeholders’ expertise; ii) design, implement and assess local innovation actions based on stakeholders’ engagement; iii) address cross-scale issues from local actions to global impacts; iv) elaborate a tool box of science-based methodologies and standards to promote the use of nature-based solutions that contribute to achieving specific UN sustainable development goals, combining SDG13 “Climate action” and SDG15 “Life on land”, and address societal challenges. FORCES will develop research and innovation actions in various types of forest socio-ecosystems, aiming to generalize forest-based solutions, and will interact with similar projects on other ecosystems through a clustering approach as mentioned in the call. Forests are appropriate for this research and innovation action because: (1) forests harbor an important terrestrial biodiversity and are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to cumulative effects of annual climate on trees, (2) forests are social-ecological systems providing multiple ecosystem services and contributing to people welfare, they are a lever for C-sequestration and substitution, (3) in the context of global change and multiple uncertainties, the emergence of a new paradigm in forest management offers opportunities to innovate, (4) forests are at the cross-road of multiple EU policies but biodiversity and climate objectives are not yet considered jointly in forest policies and strategies. NbS will be designed and assessed in six types of forest systems in Europe and the CELAC. These Innovation Action Areas will be supported by associated Research Sites for data acquisition and model calibration. Multiple time frames will be considered to account for uncertainties in global change scenarios (2035, 2050, 2100).