The Belmont Forum new Collaborative Research Action (CRA) entitled “Ocean 2: Towards the Ocean We Want: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Sustainability for Nature and Human Well-being” is a global initiative focused on creating a healthy, sustainable ocean for both nature and people. This CRA will drive transdisciplinary projects to help tackle urgent ocean challenges, aligning with global goals such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Ocean Decade Challenges. This call is a formal contribution to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, and funded projects will be considered as formally endorsed Decade Actions.
This initiative seeks transdisciplinary teams, bringing together experts from the natural and social sciences with societal partners (communities, industry, and NGOs) from at least three different countries, and is funded by at least three participating organizations. The length of the projects is expected to be 36 months. Proposals must be submitted as a “Research Consortium” and include a strong linkage between societal and environmental aspects within Global Change.
Key Thematic Areas
- Biodiversity Conservation and Nature-Based Solutions: Focusing on identifying and protecting priority areas, recovering overexploited marine resources, preventing non-indigenous species, utilizing Digital Sequence Information (DSI), preventing pollution, building a sustainable blue economy, promoting ‘One Health’ approaches, restoring marine biodiversity, and addressing blue carbon and ocean acidification.
- Ocean-Biodiversity-Climate Integration: Addressing the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and human well-being, ensuring food security amidst environmental changes, strengthening coastal cities’ vulnerability and adaptation strategies, and advancing scenario development, modeling, and data management.
- Nature Futures, Ocean Governance, and Ethics for Sustainability: Supporting the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, developing nature futures and sustainable scenarios, informing policies for sustainable ocean management, fostering regional cooperation, incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge, building capacity for innovation, and ensuring evidence-informed decision-making.
All projects must also contribute to Ocean Decade Challenge 10, which focuses on empowering society to achieve the Decade’s objectives.
Submission Process
The submission process for CRA Ocean 2 will be in two stages:
- Registration (mandatory for full proposal submission)
- Full Proposals
All submissions must be made online through the BFGo portal. Capacity-building and collaborative networking activities will be available to support applicants in developing strong transdisciplinary proposals.
Funding organizations from the following countries have tentatively agreed to support the call: Australia, Brazil (Santa Catarina and São Paulo), Canada, Chinese Taipei, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and the UK. Non-governmental funding organizations that have tentatively agreed to support the call are the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and Future Earth (FE).
