Funding announcements

On this page we regularly inform you about current funding announcements. The following calls are currently open:

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) as a partner of Biodiversa+ is pleased to announce the launch of the 2024–2025 joint call for research proposals on the topic “Biodiversity and Transformative Change” (referred to as BiodivTransform).

Scope of the call
Recognising that the worldwide crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution are highly interlinked, with an urgent need to understand trade-offs and cross-linkages both in terms of drivers and effects, this joint research call will aim for interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and/or cross-sectoral research and innovation projects to identify, analyse, and comprehend transformation processes that may halt and reverse biodiversity decline. It should generate knowledge to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as the benefits these may provide to people, through transformative change to mitigate and reverse biodiversity threats. Transformative change can be defined as “Fundamental system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values needed for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity” (IPBES 2019).

The call is not restricted in terms of specific environments nor geographic areas, encompassing all realms (terrestrial, marine, coastal and freshwater) and ecosystems experiencing various levels and sources of disturbances, including transition zones and interfaces (coastal, wetlands, urban–rural, forest–agriculture, etc.) and in integrated land/seascapes.

Projects will be expected to demonstrate academic excellence with potential for societal and policy impact regarding biodiversity, aiming to connect science, society, policy, and practices for transformative change.

Main steps of the call
The call is planned to be officially launched on 10 September 2024. A two-step application procedure will be used with a closing date for pre-proposals’ submission early November 2024. A first evaluation of pre-proposals will be organised and the deadline to submit full proposals will be early April 2025.

Proposals (in English only) will have to be submitted electronically. Pre-proposals shall be submitted via an Electronic Proposal Submission System (EPSS) only. For applicants applying for funds from Germany, full proposals shall be submitted via EPSS AND via elan.

More instructions regarding submission, eligibility and evaluation criteria and other relevant information will be published with the official call announcement early September 2024.

Eligibility
To be eligible, research consortia will have to include teams from a minimum of 3 countries financially participating in the Call, including at least 2 from EU Member States or EU Associated Countries.

For the DFG, the eligibility requirements comply with the standard rules for DFG research grants and include members of universities of applied sciences (HAW).

Assessment criteria
The research proposals will be evaluated by independent experts against the following criteria:

• Step 1 (pre-proposal stage): fit to the scope of the call, novelty of the research and impact
• Step 2 (full proposal stage): (scientific) excellence, quality and efficiency of the implementation (of the project plan) and impact (including expected societal impact (incl. policy impact), and approach to stakeholder engagement)

Research projects will be expected to have a holistic approach and to be transnational, inter- and transdisciplinary and mobilise as needed natural sciences, technical sciences, social sciences and humanities.

For both steps, the international added value of a submitted project must be clearly presented.

The detailed list of evaluation criteria to be used for this call will be published at the official launch of the call in September.

Transnational research consortia
At this stage, a global budget of over 40 million euros has been provisionally reserved by 34 countries together with the European Commission. The countries which have expressed a preliminary interest in participating in the Call are:

Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy (pending), Italy (province of Bolzano), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Morocco, Norway, Poland, Portugal (Azores), Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Tunisia, and Turkey.

Please note that this list is not final. Countries may be added and / or removed between now and the official launch of the call early September. It will regularly be updated and published on the Biodiversa+ website.

Sustainable, efficient and resilient production systems in agriculture are of fundamental importance on the way to a functioning sustainable bioeconomy. One of the greatest challenges for primary agricultural production is coping with the effects of climate change and its global consequences for people, the environment and the economy. In this context, modern, efficient plant breeding research can make a particular contribution to ensuring food security for a growing world population and at the same time a reliable supply of biomass for industry.

Within the framework of this call, European and non-European partners are jointly funding international collaborative projects that are researching new findings and technologies in order to establish important contributions to a sustainable and resilient supply system in relevant areas of food and biomass production for the bioeconomy. The BMBF intends to fund European and international collaborative research and development projects as part of the "Green ERA-Hub" initiative. In the course of this second funding announcement, research, development and innovation plans that fall under the Green ERA Hub's focus topic "Improving the resilience and health of crops" will be selected as part of a competition.

Period of validity: The term of this funding guideline is limited until the date of expiry of its basis under state aid law, the GBER, plus an adjustment period of six months, i.e. until June 30, 2027. Should the temporal application of the GBER be extended without relevant changes to the content of the aid scheme, the term of these funding guidelines will be extended accordingly, but not beyond December 31, 2032.

Click here for the funding announcement on the BMBF website.

The aim of the funding measure is to give new impetus to the necessary modernization and adaptation of the water supply in Germany through research and innovation and to strengthen resilience to future requirements. The aim is to further develop practical and flexible solutions for the future value retention and optimization of water management infrastructures and the operating concepts based on them and to adapt these to the changing framework conditions.

As a result of the funding initiative, technologies and organizational and structural solutions for increasing the resilience of the public water supply should be available, the practical implementation of which has been realized in municipalities and pilot regions in an exemplary manner. Particular consideration should be given to the economic viability of the solutions. The announcement is an initiative to promote the transfer of research and innovation into practice and is also explicitly aimed at companies in the water industry and municipal operators of water infrastructure. The aim is to promote transferability to other regions and accelerate the sustainable adaptation of the water supply infrastructure as a whole.

Click here for the funding announcement on the BMBF website.

With this funding guideline dated 16.11.2023, the BMBF intends to support young scientists who wish to qualify in the field of society-related sustainability research and the management of inter- and transdisciplinary research groups on the topic of urban-rural regions, generally for up to five years, as part of the Federal Government's "Future Strategy for Research and Innovation" and the Transformation Initiative Urban-Rural Future of the "Research for Sustainability" (FONA) strategy. An overarching goal of the funding measure is to produce excellently trained junior staff in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research with attractive career prospects in science and practice. Interdisciplinary social-ecological junior research groups are funded, which develop innovative ideas and solutions with a transdisciplinary research approach in order to make cities fit for the future. Where possible, new solutions are tested on site, for example in a real laboratory, and their potential impact on sustainability is evaluated. The focus is on cities and their functionally interlinked surrounding regions in Germany. Depending on the research question, studies can relate spatially to individual neighborhoods, cities, the urban hinterland or regions with several urban cores. Cities in other European countries can also be included, for example as part of comparative studies. Project outlines must be submitted in the first stage of the procedure by April 29, 2024 at the latest and subsequently every two years by April 29, 2028. Click here for the full announcement of the funding guideline on the BMBF website.

The aim of the "New Products for the Bioeconomy" ideas competition funding guideline is the low-threshold implementation of ideas and research results in commercial applications for the bioeconomy. The funding body is the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The purpose of the funding is to enable (young) scientists to develop very early and high-risk product ideas for the bioeconomy and to prepare the technical implementation as well as the exploration of commercial exploitation options, possibly also in the context of a spin-off. The funding guideline applies in conjunction with the German government's "National Bioeconomy Strategy". The aim of the strategy is to strengthen Germany's pioneering role in the bioeconomy and to develop the technologies and jobs of tomorrow. In doing so, the Federal Government is also acknowledging its global responsibility in the internationally networked bioeconomy. More information on the funding guideline can be found here: https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/shareddocs/bekanntmachungen/de/2021/07/Bekanntmachung19_Nationale-Bio%C3%B6konomiestrategie.html?view=renderNewsletterHtml