Work
packages
CLEVER investigates this question, particularly for animal feed, energy crops, tropical timber and aquacultures.
WP1
Coordination, partnerships, and synthesis
An effective coordination keeps the project connected and contributes to its successful completion. WP1 includes the coordination of exchange between the WPs and modules, monitoring of project milestones (MS), deliverables, and objectives, and risk management. WP1 further ensures adherence to open science and ethical principles. Beyond project management and scientific coordination, WP1 liaises with scientific partners, including the thematically related Horizon Europe and H2020 projects, and leads project synthesis activities.
Lead partner: UBO
WP2
Quantifying biodiversity impacts and conceptualizing biomass trade linkages
Indicators and biodiversity are key for WP2. The team provides quantitative metrics of the impacts of land-use and land cover change (LULCC) on terrestrial biodiversity based on an improved conceptual understanding of the linkages between biomass trade, land use, climate change, fire regimes, and biodiversity at regional scales. Indicators are then employed to quantify present and future LULCC impacts on species distribution and composition, including a broad set of rarely addressed groups of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plant species.
Lead partner: UFMG
WP3
Causal effects and leakage in trade-biodiversity linkages
WP3 quantifies the impacts of trade in non-food biomass on biodiversity. This package looks at how policy instruments and governance regimes moderate these impacts so as to identify leverage points for more effective biodiversity governance. At the global scale, the team quantifies substitution dynamics and related leakage effects as an input to improving the representation of market mechanisms affecting biodiversity outcomes in the modeling platform GLOBIOM. At the regional scale, the stickiness of biomass sourcing patterns is quantified, a key determinant of leakage phenomena within-value chains.
Lead partner: UBO
WP4
Theories of change and policy analysis for public and private value chain interventions
The main research question of this WP is: through what international pathways of domestic influence can transnational biomass supply chain policies and governance improve biodiversity outcomes? After identifying policies and governance mechanisms, the team analyzes their underlying theories of change and related gender dimensions. The final goal is to improve the understanding of how governance regimes in biomass-exporting and importing regions influence each other. Based on this, this WP assesses the (in)coherences of existing policy mixes as a strategy to identify new leverage points for biodiversity conservation via strategic policy alignment within and across trading regions.
Lead partner: UFR
WP5
Actor behavior and leverage points along international value chains
The main objective of this work package is to analyze the impacts of policies and governance mechanisms of specific value-chains on the behavioral patterns of the related actors. This is done via a detailed actor mapping, followed by identifying the set of drivers influencing their behavior and assessing their behavioral responses. After that, actor-specific roles are characterized in processes that could, for example, redirect trade flows in a way that potentially reduces policy effectiveness, and determine the plausibility of effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The results improve our qualitative understanding of causal impact pathways and serve as inputs for quantitative modeling of impacts.
Lead partner: EFI
WP6
Representing ecological footprints and policy-trade-biodiversity linkages in global modelling
Developing a new global model platform is the main goal of this work package. This model will assess the biodiversity impacts of different policy options and supply chain initiatives, such as those related to soybean, forest products, and aquaculture. In particular, this package improves the representation of those supply chains in a global modeling framework. As a result, improved and more complete indicators will be obtained from specific sector analysis, enhancing the existing modeling framework, and generating more accurate and informative future projections of biomass flow across value chains, related actors, and respective footprints.
Lead partner: UPV
WP7
Scenario-based assessment of policy impacts and SDG interrelationships
This work package builds on WP6. It aims to design and quantify forward-looking scenarios relevant to exploring future potential developments in biomass trade and related environmental and social impacts, using the enhanced GLOBIOM modeling platform. It examines in each scenario the effectiveness and efficiency of selected alternative policies and governance options in protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services, while also analyzing related co-benefits and trade-offs among biodiversity conservation and other SDG dimensions, in particular climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Lead partner: IIASA
WP8
Solution co-design and communication for transformational change
Transformative change requires effective transfer of scientific knowledge and evidence to policy makers, business, and society. WP8 engages with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the relevant target groups for CLEVER outputs are involved in a comprehensive research and innovation co-design process across all work packages and throughout the project lifetime. This includes a stakeholder-specific communication strategy and innovative dissemination formats designed to leverage the power of agents of change, such as journalists, in the transfer of research results and co-designed solutions to the scientific community and the public.
Lead partner: UNEP-WCMC