BIOCLIMA: Assessing Land use, Climate and Biodiversity impacts of land-based climate mitigation and biodiversity policies in the EU

The EU Fit for 55 Package and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, have underscored the role that the agriculture and forestry sectors will have in tackling climate change, protecting the environment and preserving or restoring biodiversity. Exploratory scenario analyses in the ‘Clean Planet for All' Communication identified important linkages between these objectives that could be synergistic but also antagonistic, depending on the land-use policies applied and their geographic location. Such challenges call for significant advances in integrated land-use planning and policy design. With the call for tender ENV/2020/OP/0014 the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment has identified the need to explore the potential synergies between the climate change and biodiversity agenda with scenarios and models.

The BIOCLIMA consortium has responded to this call with a proposal whose overarching goal is to provide a robust ex-ante assessment of the possible impacts and synergies of current EU policies on biodiversity and climate.