DAISY

Digital, technological and social innovation mixes enabling transformation for
biodiversity and equity


UFZ project team: Elsa Maria Cardona Santos, Hannah Inga Korinth, Tobias Eckstein, Yves Zinngrebe


Funding: European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement no: 101181857


Duration: 2025 – 2028 (3 years)



Background

The escalating and alarming decline in biodiversity not only poses a concerning threat to the biosphere and human life through the breakdown of fundamental ecosystem services but also amplifies existing social inequities, which in turn predict and further increase biodiversity loss. To enable this planet to thrive for future generations, transformative change addressing biodiversity loss and social equity is needed at all levels. For a change to be transformative, it requires changing the political sphere of governance systems and the rules that shape our social interactions (structures), in the practical sphere of individual and collective actions, behaviours and, initiatives (practices), and in the personal sphere of worldviews, values, paradigms and beliefs (views)[1]. Such a response to biodiversity loss requires purposive interventions (including digital, technological and social innovations) capable of triggering transformative change from a series of economic, socio-cultural and political starting points.

Objective

DAISY will advance understanding of how specific mixes of interventions, including social-

technological, can be used to induce transformation for biodiversity and equity.

This requires an advanced understanding of the complex ways in which agency, power dynamics, socio-economic and political processes and an array of social-behavioural characteristics variously serve to shape the ability of individuals, groups and institutions to respond (i.e. their ‘response-ability’) to the biodiversity and equity crisis in a transformative way.


Research Questions

  1. Which socio-economic, political and behavioural processes, and their interrelationships shape and enable our personal, political and practical ability to respond to the biodiversity crisis and how do they impact on transformative change?

  2. What tools, processes, interventions and innovations exist that are conducive to triggering transformative change and what enables them to address biodiversity loss and social inequity?

  3. Derived from existing tools and innovations, what type of intervention mixes can be brought together and be applied in practice to induce transformation in all three spheres (personal, political, practical) to support biodiversity and equity prioritisation in decision- and policymaking?


DAISY will:

  • provide an overview of the main social, political and economic processes, projects and innovations contributing to transformation;
  • scan current and emerging social-technological innovations and trends;
  • develop a diagnostic tool to assess transformative potential;
  • co-productively, in collaboration with stakeholders, identify, weave together and test transformative interventions mixes (TIMs);
  • assess transformation and key enabling factors in five intensive seed innovation case studies within the domains of agri-food, education, energy and urban and regional development, together with a series of additional lab-based studies and foresight scenario workshops;
  • bring together networks and science-policy interfaces related to transformation communities of both practice and research;
  • and provide concrete recommendations for policymaking on how transformation for biodiversity and equity can be realised on the personal, practical and political spheres.



Consortium

Coventry University, Vereinigtes Königreich
GreenFormation, Ungarn
ESSRG, Ungarn
Kaunas University of Technology, Litauen
Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Deutschland
Transdisciplinary Institute for Environmental and Social Studies, Griechenland
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung, Deutschland
Stichting Wageningen Research, Niederlande


For questions regarding the project, reach out to: elsa.cardona@ufz.de or hannah.korinth@ufz.de

[1] IPBES. (2024). Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., Agrawal, A., Bennett, E., Biggs, O., Calderón Contreras, R., Carr, E., Frantzeskaki, N., Gosnell, H., Gurung, J., Lambertucci, S., Leventon, J., Liao, C., Reyes García, V., Shannon, L., Villasante, S., Wickson, F., Zinngrebe, Y., and Perianin, L. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11382215