HORIZON EUROPE GUARDEN project: safeguarding biodiversity and critical ecosystem services across all sectors and scales

GUARDEN's primary mission is to safeguard biodiversity and its contributions to people by placing them at the forefront of policy and decision-making. This will be achieved through the development of user-oriented decision support applications (DSAs) and the leveraging of multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs).

They will consider policy and management objectives and priorities across sectors and scales, build consensus to address data gaps, analytical uncertainties, or conflicting objectives, and assess options for implementing adaptive transformative change. To do so, GUARDEN will leverage a suite of methods and tools that utilize deep learning, Earth observation, and hybrid modeling to increase the amount of standardized and geolocated biodiversity data, build a new generation of predictive biodiversity models and indicators of ecosystem status under multiple pressures (human and climate), and propose a set of complementary ecological indicators that will likely be incorporated into local management and policies.

The GUARDEN approach will be applied in sectoral case studies involving end-users and stakeholders through multi-stakeholder partnerships, and will address critical cross-sectoral challenges (at the nexus of biodiversity and energy/transport infrastructure deployment, agriculture, and coastal urban development).

Therefore, GUARDEN DSAs will help stakeholders involved in the challenge improve their holistic understanding of ecosystem functioning, biodiversity loss, and its drivers, and explore the potential ecological and social impacts of alternative decisions. Following the acquisition of this new knowledge and evidence, DSAs will help end-users not only navigate but also (re)configure the policy landscape to make informed and comprehensive decisions through cross-sector integration.