The overall objective of ACCLIMATE is to achieve enhanced integrated national and international strategies for climate-resilient, low-emission development. ACCLIMATE will contribute to improving the transparency, consistency, and clarity of GHG emission reduction commitments and create appropriate tools by developing an assessment framework for mitigation commitments. Working in a bottom-up manner with national experts within an international consortium comprising high-emitting countries from the Americas, Asia and Europe, as well as low-emitting countries from West Africa, ACCLIMATE will identify needs for improvements of NDCs and long-term strategies. A focus will be set on adequacy, fairness and feasibility, as well as on needs for improving current policies and measures to actually achieve NDCs and long-term objectives. On this basis, the development of enhanced national strategies and pathways will similarly build on existing scientific national expertise and models, with the development of enhanced pathways for all focus countries being undertaken by the respective partners of the consortium based in these countries, with support from European partners. These pathways will include an increased understanding of the role of ecosystems, non-CO2 gases, and climate impacts and risks, and socioeconomic tradeoffs. The development of enhanced pathways and policy recommendations will build on sectoral deep dives in order to fully capture sector-specific mitigation enablers and barriers. ACCLIMATE will in particular focus on the sectors industry, buildings, AFOLU, transport, and energy supply. ACCLIMATE will enhance the capacity in partner countries to develop and model mitigation strategies and pathways and to analyse and develop respective policy strategies and packages. Furthermore, enhanced strategies will be closely co-created with policy-makers and stakeholders at the national, sectoral and international levels.

Demand for agricultural commodities from EU agrofood systems are driving land use change in biodiversity-rich countries in the Global South, leading to major biodiversity losses. Tackling the EU’s global biodiversity footprint is a top EU policy priority. The science demonstrates the need for transformative change in economic, social, and financial models for safe and just transitions, but there is limited knowledge on how to achieve transformative change in practice, which requires navigation of biodiversity, climate and equity trade-offs and synergies. TC4BE will support transdisciplinary research on different dimensions and scales of telecoupled agrofood systems, engaging diverse stakeholders, including EU and producer-country policy-makers and Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Scenarios and modelling of EU agrofood systems transformations, will be complemented by analysis of EU governance, trade, legal, consumer, collective action and sustainable finance levers and social innovations. In three producer countries (Cameroon, Colombia, and Kenya), TC4BE will generate methods for and assess land use change drivers, at-risk biodiversity hotspots, and the effectiveness of Sustainable Landscapes Initiatives. In six landscapes TC4BE will explore relationships to nature, perceptions of socio-ecological histories and futures, rigorously evaluate SLIs, and conduct regenerative enterprise case studies using a structured landscape learning process. Transformative change pathways will be co-generated by diverse stakeholders recognizing plural values and informed by new evidence, decision-making tools and training modules. The overall process will strengthen the capacity of participating stakeholders (care-knowledge-agency) to influence biodiversity and equity outcomes. A global dialogue, facilitated by the Global Landscapes Forum will link the transdisciplinary processes between the scales, supported by additional dissemination and communication activities.