BiodivERsA guide on policy relevance and effective science-policy interfacing in research proposals

The objective of the present guide is to help researchers to:

- Better understand what is policy relevance of research

- Be aware of what the criteria are for evaluating policy relevance of research in BiodivERsA calls

- Be able to more efficiently identify the most relevant policies and policy-making bodies for a given research project

Such policies may directly relate to biodiversity and ecosystem services (which is the anchor of BiodivERsA calls) or indirectly, depending on the specific call topic (e.g. biodiversity and health, scenarios of biodiversity, etc.)

This guide complements the use of the Stakeholder Engagement Handbook to help researchers increase the quality of their research proposals in terms of policy relevance. In addition, the guide will likely be helpful in the context of other calls for research proposals launched by initiatives having the same expectations as BiodivERsA regarding policy relevance of research.

Frédéric Lemaître

BiodivERsA Science-society and science-policy interfacing

E-mail: frederic.lemaitre@fondationbiodiversite.fr