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Biodiversity is of critical importance for human well-being, but it faces severe threats due to factors like intensive land use, habitat loss, pollution, climate change, and more. Although relevant policy objectives were adopted and some measures for change are having a positive effect, Switzerland's biodiversity remains in poor condition, with a significant number of species and habitats under threat, undermining the supply of ecosystem services. To reverse the current biodiversity decline and to meet national and international objectives for its safeguarding, there is a need to provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges facing, and opportunities offered by, biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to develop practical solutions for their conservation and sustainable use.

The NRP 82 "Promoting Biodiversity and Sustainable Ecosystem Services for Switzerland" is a comprehensive effort to address the conservation, management and use of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Switzerland, as well as the Swiss footprint on biodiversity and ecosystem services abroad, and their underlying societal, economic, and political drivers. The programme will contribute substantially to informing Switzerland as to how it can meet or exceed the necessary national contribution to achieving the ambition of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2022).

It aims to achieve its objectives by working in close collaboration with stakeholders from civil society, as well as from the private and public sectors. The projects address the following modules:

  • Module 1: Drivers and Trends - Investigates the drivers and trends of biodiversity change and how to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services, focusing on establishing knowledge related to the direct use and management of ecosystems.
  • Module 2: Valuation and Visions - Examines valuation perspectives on biodiversity and ecosystem services, including economic, social, and cultural aspects, and addresses goals and visions for the future.
  • Module 3: Governance and Transformation - Explores governance options and pathways promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services, with a focus on transformative change.

The programme aims to achieve the following objectives:

  • fill knowledge gaps to enable an integrative monitoring and analysis of trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services, their relationships, the underlying drivers, and to enable actions towards reversing the negative Swiss footprint on biodiversity.
  • identify the value systems informing stakeholders’ engagement with biodiversity and ecosystem services and visions for safeguarding them. 
  • analyse and develop governance options and instruments (e.g. economic, social, regulatory, or legal ones) for promoting biodiversity and sustainable ecosystem services.
  • develop and explore transformative pathways, which lead towards realising visions of biodiversity and ecosystem services and which encompass cultural, political, economic and technological dimensions.

The research phase will start in the second half of 2025 and run for 5 years. NRP 82 will operate with a total budget of CHF 15.5 million.