Call: Operationalising insurance value of ecosystems

1. Excellent Science
2. Industrial Leadership
3. Societal Challenges

Specific objectives:

• to achieve a resource – and water - efficient and climate change resilient economy and society,
• the protection and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems, and
• a sustainable supply and use of raw materials, in order to meet the needs of a growing global population within the sustainable limits of the planet's natural resources and eco-systems.

The 20th century's era of seemingly plentiful and cheap resources is coming to an end. The ability of the economy to adapt and become more climate change resilient, resource efficient and at the same time remain competitive depends on high levels of eco-innovation, of a societal, economic, organisational and technological nature. With the global market for eco-innovation worth around 1 trillion € per annum and expected to triple by 2030, eco-innovation represents a major opportunity to boost competitiveness and job creation in European economies.

To ensure EU added value and given the transnational and global nature of the climate and the environment, their scale and complexity, and the international dimension of the raw materials supply chain, activities have to be carried out at the Union level and beyond. Reducing resource use and environmental impacts, whilst increasing competitiveness, will require a decisive societal and technological transition to an economy based on a sustainable relationship between nature and human well-being. Innovation in these fields will provide opportunities for growth and jobs, as well as innovative options involving science, technology including of ICT, the economy, society, policy and governance.

Research and innovation will cover the following broad lines of activities:

• Fighting and adapting to climate change
• Protecting the environment, sustainably managing natural resources, water, biodiversity and ecosystems
• Ensuring the sustainable supply of non-energy and non-agricultural raw materials
• Enabling the transition towards a green economy and society through eco-innovation
• Developing comprehensive and sustained global environmental observation and information systems
• Cultural heritage

The call Greening the economy consists of 29 topics addressing the priority areas of climate services, moving towards a low-carbon Europe, nature-based solutions for territorial resilience, water, raw materials, Earth observation and cultural heritage forsustainable growth. All activities funded under this call should as far as possible use data resulting from or made available through different initiatives of the European Commission. The innovative element is the opportunity to use the tools Pilot on Open Research Data which aims to improve and maximise access to and re-use of research data generated by projects OR  Data Management Plans (DMPs) detailing what data the project will generate, whether and how it will be exploited or made accessible for verification and re-use, and how it will be curated and preserved.

Specific topics for the calls:

• Exploiting the added value of climate services
• Integrated European regional modelling and climate prediction system
• Climate services market research
• Towards a robust and comprehensive greenhouse gas verification system
• A 1.5 million year look into the past for improving climate predictions
• Pathways towards the decarbonisation and resilience of the European economy in the timeframe 2030-2050 and beyond
• Coordinating and supporting research and innovation actions on the decarbonisation of the EU economy
• Large-scale demonstrators on nature-based solutions for hydro-meteorological risk reduction
• Operationalising insurance value of ecosystems
• Multi-stakeholder dialogue platform to promote innovation with nature to address societal challenges
• Supporting international cooperation activities on water
• Novel in-situ observation systems
• Coordination of citizens' observatories initiatives
• European data hub of the GEOSS information system
• Cultural heritage as a driver for sustainable growth
• Innovative financing, business and governance models for adaptive re-use of cultural heritage
• Support to confirmed Presidency events (conferences) – Malta, United Kingdom, Estonia
• Support to confirmed Presidency event (conference) in Slovakia
• Macro-economic and societal benefits from creating new markets in a circular economy
• Pre-commercial procurement on soil decontamination
• Preparing for pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and/or public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI) in support of climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials
• Transformations to sustainability
• Framework Partnership Agreement supporting Joint Actions towards a sustainable green economy in Europe and beyond

There is an increasing trend worldwide in the occurrence and severity of disasters. This trend will be further aggravated by global changes, including environmental and climate change ones. As a result, individual households, industry, private investors and public authorities are finding themselves increasingly exposed to changing and multiple risks. Ecosystems, through the provision of their services, can provide more holistic solutions to disaster risk reduction and to the mitigation of the effects of climate change, while serving multiple purposes. For instance, they can simultaneously mitigate the impacts of hazards, enhance social, economic and environmental resilience, and reduce the exposure and vulnerability of communities, businesses, properties and other economic assets.

To promote the uptake of ecosystem-based approaches for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation,, the theoretical and empirical exploration of the concept of insurance value of the ecosystems – the value of the sustained capacity of ecosystems to reduce or eliminate risks to human society and economic activities caused by global change or natural hazards – and methodologies for operationalizing the concept are needed.

The insurance value of ecosystems comprises both an estimate of reduced risk, due to the physical presence of an ecosystem, and of the capacity to sustain risk reduction (resilience of the system) under global change. The insurance value of ecosystems has so far been overlooked in research and practice: e.g. socio-economic approaches to estimating insurance value are poorly developed, methodologies for quantifying and qualifying the insurance value of ecosystems are still in their infancy, and relevant institutional and economic incentives to protect, enhance or restore this insurance potential are lacking.

Nature-based solutions, by means of their proper insurance capacity, can provide cost-effective solutions for disaster risk management and reduction, and for climate change adaptation, but can also be used for the protection, restoration and conservation of ecosystems and thus enhance the insurance value of the latter.

At least three legal entities. Each of the three must be established in a different EU Member State or Horizon 2020 associated country. All three legal entities must be independent of each other. 

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the range of 5 million € would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. Funding rate: 100%

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