The European Commission is seeking applications for the Programme for Environment and Climate Action (LIFE) under the topic Nature and Biodiversity.
Objectives
Projects should fall under at least one of the two areas of intervention:
Intervention area: “Space for Nature”
Any project aimed at improving the condition of species or habitats through area-based conservation or restoration measures falls within the eligible scope of the intervention area “Space for Nature”. This may include, for example, projects for restoring or improving natural or semi-natural habitats, or habitats of species, both within and outside existing protected areas. This may also include projects for creating additional protected areas (or improving the biodiversity focus and contribution of existing protected areas), ecological corridors or other green infrastructure, projects testing or demonstrating new site management approaches, projects acting on pressures, etc.
Intervention area: “Safeguarding the species”
Any project aimed at improving the condition of species (or, in the case of invasive alien species, reducing their impact) through any relevant activities other than area-based conservation or restoration measures falls within the scope of the intervention area “Safeguarding the species”. Considering the broad range of threats that may act on species in addition to the degradation of their habitats, such projects may apply to a wide range of relevant measures, spanning from hard infrastructural works to awareness raising of stakeholders.
Scope
Activities that can be funded Under both areas of intervention, having clearly defined specific outcome-based biodiversity-related objectives for projects and their activities is a pre-condition for an objective prioritization of the proposals. In order to allow for effective comparison of merits of proposals, the following principles will be applied for a first level prioritisation which defines the urgency under the two areas of intervention:
For proposals targeting species and habitats covered by the EU Habitats Directive, priority is given to those that are clearly targeting habitats or species in unfavourable and declining conservation status based on the latest Article 17 reports assessments, in particular when their status is unfavourable bad and declining (U2-) both at the EU- and national biogeographical region(s) level, where the project is taking place.
For the EU 27 Member States, for bird species, and species and habitats not covered by EU Nature legislation, priority is given to proposals clearly targeting those that are in higher extinction risk categories (in particular: endangered or worse) in the relevant EU red lists, of habitats or species. For EU Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories priority is given to those in higher extinction risk categories (in particular: endangered or worse) in the (Pan) European or Global IUCN red lists respectively.
Funding Information
EUR 155 000 000
Expected Impact
Applicants are expected to define, calculate, explain and achieve the expected impacts as described in the Award criterion ‘Impacts’ in terms of conservation benefit.
Considering the limited LIFE budget availability, projects requesting high EU contributions (e.g. above 5 M EUR) have to present, in particular, exceptionally clear and convincing evidence of the EU added value of their proposals in terms of impact and value for money. The requested contribution has to be clearly justified by an exceptional impact benefitting urgent conservation needs/priorities. While projects with higher budgets benefit from economies of scale, the applicants need to demonstrate the cost efficiency of their projects and provide detailed cost breakdown in the ‘detailed budget table’ mandatory annex. All LIFE proposals will have to report on their expected outputs and impacts taking into account the LIFE Key Performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs will contribute to evaluating the impact of the LIFE proposal on an environmental but also socio-economic level (e.g. via actions impacting the local economy and population). All the indicators measured should be coherent wth the conservation or biodiversity problem addressed and the type of activities planned.
Applicants should review relevant indicators in Part C of the eGrant application and complete them with the estimated impact of the project. Part C data should be coherent with the description of impacts of section 2 of Part B of the Application Form.
In case Part C does not include impact indicators that are important for the specific project, applicants should make use of the indicator “Other project specific KPIs” in Part C and provide a relevant description of such indicators in section 2 of Part B of the Application Form.
If relevant, projects must upload a Geographic Information System (GIS) file and associated data of the specific geographical area where the intervention took place as a deliverable in their final report. This map should enable to spatially visualise the impact already reported in the KPI database. The specific format and technical requirements of the GIS files will be provided to the supported projects during their implementation.
Eligibility Criteria
In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
be legal entities (public or private bodies)
be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:
EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
non-EU countries:
listed EEA countries and countries associated to the LIFE Programme
the coordinator must be established in an eligible country
