SustainCBW

The United Nations have agreed upon 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and associated 169 targets which comprise all relevant aspects of the social-ecological system. They also aim to reduce climate change impacts and biodiversity loss, and are therefore interconnected with the 2-degree climate target and the Aichi Biodiversity targets of the CBD (Aichi targets, hereafter). All three conventions aim to secure human well-being in a sustainable world and contain guidelines on how to monitor the society’s progress towards achieving these goals. Yet, none of these goals and targets function independently, they interconnect across sectors, offer synergies, contain dependencies and bear the risk of trade-offs (Spangenberg 2016). In order to realize the vision of a future sustainable world it is required a) to thoroughly analyse the interfaces between SDG or their individual targets, Aichi targets and the 2-degree climate target and to develop solutions for minimizing tradeoffs and optimizing synergies, b) to correspondingly co-design application oriented research projects that will establish the basis to secure natural capital, and c) to bring scientists, decision-makers and the general public together to assess, monitor and adjust respective policies and implementation strategies towards achieving a balance between the targets of the SDG, the CBD and the Paris Agreement. SustainCBW will develop an innovative framework and examine available metrics with regard to their suitability for achieving objectives a-c at both, the national and the global scale, as well as across different temporal scales.

The Leibniz Research Alliance on Biodiversity (LVB) pools competencies and resources of 20 member institutes within the Leibniz Association, drawing on their experience in integrative research on biodiversity, sustainable development and climate change. Our overarching goal is to develop integrative solutions through inter- and transdisciplinary research for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. With SustainCBW, the LVB will establish a scientific nucleus to act as a development hub for the co-design of research projects that will act as individual research pillars. It will serve as a synthesis hub for specific research findings from each of the research pillars and support knowledge transfer into the discourse of the three conventions. The central milestone will be to establish a research network structure that identifies gaps in science, knowledge transfer or dissemination in order to work towards closing existing gaps.