Challenge
BIOTRAILS aims to generate knowledge and develop tools that will inspire and accelerate biodiversity-relevant transformative change in our society. BIOTRAILS will use Participatory Systems Dynamics Modelling to take into account the complex interrelations between the indirect drivers of change in four value chains of traded products (cocoa produced in Peru; forest-based cultural products created by indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon; fisheries and aquaculture products supplied by the Mediterranean basin and consumed within the Mediterranean countries; and gold mined in Ghana), in an integrated manner alongside the climate and social justice agendas.
Based on this knowledge and tools, BIOTRAILS will bring together stakeholders across different stages of product/material global value chains to collaboratively design pathways that can lead to a sustainable future, proposing interventions in policy, urban consumption patterns and corporate policies. BIOTRAILS will set up Learning and Action Alliances: groups of organisations and individuals with a common interest to address the multiple challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and people’s good quality of life, across different spatial and administrative scales and stages of global value chains. Environmentally Extended Multi-Regional Input–Output analysis and Life Cycle Assessment methods will be used to trace the environmental pressures arising from extraction/production, trade, and consumption activities, and behaviour patterns along global supply chains in the target sectors.
The project will assess, besides the economic values, the biophysical, social and relational values emerging across different steps of the value chain. Behavioural studies will be conducted based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which considers psychological and behavioural patterns. Structural Equation Models will be used to identify the most significant factors that drive behavioural change.
Project Objectives
Drive the Nexus dialogue through actively engaging and incentivising communities of stakeholders along the production-consumption chains and biodiversity-climate-society agendas.
Improve the understanding of how biodiversity is affected by the indirect drivers of change.
Improve the understanding of the Nexus of extraction, production, consumption, trade and behaviour patterns through the flow of natural resources along global and regional supply chains.
Develop tools and propose scenarios for transformative change with communities of stakeholders based on different case studies.
Accelerate the adoption of the BIOTRAILS models, methods and tools by the wider community to ensure impact maximisation.
Role in the Project
Within BIOTRAILS project, eBOS will create the BIOTRAILS data repository managing all data collected within the case studies and existing various sources, following a data collection and integration protocol to enable seamless access to the required datasets. In addition, eBOS will design and implement the graphical Human Machine Interface of the system by selecting the appropriate type of user interface components for the visualisation of the different scenarios.
Apart from designing and maintaining the project’s website, eBOS will also leverage its wide experience in the market by leading the exploitation activities and sustainability plan, as well as acting as the project’s Quality Assurance Manager, ensuring the impact maximisation and outreach of the project’s results, and the high quality of the work produced.
Consortium
Associated Partner
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
