FORCES aims towards establishing an evidence-based nature-based solutions (NbS) framework by implementing innovative forest-based solutions. FORCES seeks to develop ecosystem-based adaptation actions that simultaneously preserve high levels of biodiversity, ensure sustaining natural capital and the flow of ecosystem services while protecting communities’ livelihoods and contributing to climate change mitigation. Considering that combined actions on climate, biodiversity and societal challenges cannot efficiently be achieved without multiple actors’ engagement in local actions, FORCES’s strategy is to develop local innovation actions, provide methods and tools to support their extended use and assess their potential global impacts. Thus, FORCES will: i) conduce trans-disciplinary research based on new developments in environmental and social sciences underpinned by stakeholders’ expertise; ii) design, implement and assess local innovation actions based on stakeholders’ engagement; iii) address cross-scale issues from local actions to global impacts; iv) elaborate a tool box of science-based methodologies and standards to promote the use of nature-based solutions that contribute to achieving specific UN sustainable development goals, combining SDG13 “Climate action” and SDG15 “Life on land”, and address societal challenges. FORCES will develop research and innovation actions in various types of forest socio-ecosystems, aiming to generalize forest-based solutions, and will interact with similar projects on other ecosystems through a clustering approach as mentioned in the call. Forests are appropriate for this research and innovation action because: (1) forests harbor an important terrestrial biodiversity and are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to cumulative effects of annual climate on trees, (2) forests are social-ecological systems providing multiple ecosystem services and contributing to people welfare, they are a lever for C-sequestration and substitution, (3) in the context of global change and multiple uncertainties, the emergence of a new paradigm in forest management offers opportunities to innovate, (4) forests are at the cross-road of multiple EU policies but biodiversity and climate objectives are not yet considered jointly in forest policies and strategies. NbS will be designed and assessed in six types of forest systems in Europe and the CELAC. These Innovation Action Areas will be supported by associated Research Sites for data acquisition and model calibration. Multiple time frames will be considered to account for uncertainties in global change scenarios (2035, 2050, 2100).

The megatrends are clear: people living in Europe will be older, more stressed and unhealthy, living in urban areas, and threatened by climate change effects with ever increasing immigration from developing nations. Agriculture, Forestry, Urban Planning and Environmental (AFUE) HEIs need to embed increasing health and social needs into their paradigms, teaching and business models. The health and social sectors also need to avoid the silos approach and adopt holistic thinking in achieving social and health challenges. Green infrastructures, social agriculture and forestry, rural tourism and wellness are some of the emerging business and research sectors that are providing cost-effective solutions to these emerging trends that are having a considerable impact on European policies and economy. The GREEN4C alliance aims at increasing Europe’s innovation capacity among universities and businesses by promoting green and natural approaches to health and social care. It will do so by: • facilitating the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge among universities and business coming from two key sectors that often fail to cooperate: the social-health and environmental sectors.• promoting a new, innovative and multidisciplinary global blended training course to embed health and social challenges into Agriculture, Forestry, Urban Planning and Environmental universities. • stimulating an entrepreneurial skills and attitude among students, researchers and young entrepreneurs to provide the public and private sectors with innovative and cost-effective solutions to health and social care by using natural resources. The project will focus on the countries of Italy, Romania, The Netherlands, Ireland and Austria. Results will have a strong EU-global dimension and transferability potential, capitalizing on existing wide university-business networks, the partnership with the University of British Columbia, and the European Forestry Institute an international research and

The European Union aims to reduce net carbon emissions by 55% in 2030, and become climate neutral by 2050. These goals can only be met if it boosts carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems, preferably while fostering socio-environmental co-benefits such as conserving biodiversity, adapting to climate change, and safeguarding socio-economic and cultural values. Both the IPCC and the IPBES have emphasised the great potential of ecosystem restoration and related nature-based solutions (NbS) for addressing the challenge. wildE introduces ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as an innovative restoration approach to create climate benefits while also addressing other socio-environmental needs. The project gathers a multi-disciplinary team of leading European experts to develop a research and innovation programme addressing the climate-biodiversity nexus in tight association with the socio-economic dimension of large-scale restoration. The team will also project scenarios to assess Europe’s rewilding potentials under diverse land-use and climate change futures. wildE will (i) generate comprehensive case-comparative data on European rewilding trends and outcomes, (ii) quantify the net social, economic and environmental benefits, synergies and trade-offs related to rewilding and alternative land-use options; (iii) develop cutting-edge projections for future land use and climate scenarios; and (iv) develop tangible and readily accessible decision-support and management guidelines to enable policymakers, conservation managers, communities, and the private sector to co-construct climate-smart rewilding strategies as effective NbS for meeting the EU’s climate and biodiversity targets. Embedded within an ambitious stakeholder engagement, communications programme, wildE research will enable climate-smart rewilding as operational large-scale NbS to effectively foster the natural capacity of Europe’s ecosystems for climate change mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity support.

We are facing complex societal challenges, such as protecting the environment, promoting healthy living and fighting climate change. To address such challenges, citizens must be equipped with the ability to responsibly engage in scientific discussions and decisions. Traditional formal schooling has not been able to achieve this goal: There is a wide-spread lack of scientific knowledge at all level of society and students' interest in science tends to decline within school years. One reason is the decontextualised way in which science is taught. MULTIPLIERS aims to facilitate the transition of schools into innovative and open collectors of new ideas, practices, scientific approaches, able to offer to the communities in which they are embedded a space for open, inclusive and inquiry-based learning on science issues which have an impact on citizens' lives. This will be achieved by establishing multiplayers' partnerships (Open Science Communities, OSCs) involving schools, families, civil society organisations, informal education providers, policy-makers, the media and a vast range of science institutions in six EU countries, very different in terms of geographical and economic situation. OSCs will jointly select socio-scientific issues to be tackled and develop real-life projects to be implemented in schools involving more than 1500 students of all educational levels across six EU countries. Students will interact with a broad spectrum of science professionals and be involved in data collection and decision-making processes. Via open community events, they will then share and rethink their findings and experiences, liaising with families and society, acting as science multipliers. To ensure the results' transferability and uptake, final recommendations, guidelines, and learning materials will be published in an multilingual open webspace; OSCs will be maintained and enlarged after the end of the project to further pursue the MULTIPLIERS open schooling process.