News & Events
BIOTRAILS Final Event in Rome Highlights the Path Toward Transformative Change in Biodiversity Governance
On 27 November 2025, the BIOTRAILS consortium gathered at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) in Rome for its Final Event, marking the culmination of three years of collaborative research, stakeholder engagement, and innovation aimed at driving transformative change in biodiversity-related value chains. Held in a hybrid format, the event brought together project partners, researchers, policymakers, and international organisations to reflect on achievements, exchange knowledge, and co-develop strategies for sustaining BIOTRAILS’ legacy beyond the project’s lifetime.
Opening Session: Setting the Vision for Long-Term Impact
The event kick-started with welcoming remarks and an overview of the event’s objectives, introduced by project coordinator Raffaele Giordano, who reflected on BIOTRAILS’ journey through its Kick-Off Meeting in Bari, successive General Assemblies, and extensive stakeholder engagement efforts. His introduction underscored how BIOTRAILS mobilised leverage points for transformative change through participatory processes, co-design, and cross-case learning.
Showcasing BIOTRAILS Key Results
During the Main Results Session, partners presented BIOTRAILS’ core outputs, ranging from methodological innovations to digital tools and governance instruments, followed by interactive group discussions on their long-term sustainability. Participants examined each Key Exploitable Result through the lens of end-user adoption, identifying barriers, value propositions, and priority next steps for ensuring post-project uptake. This hands-on session highlighted the continued relevance of BIOTRAILS tools, such as the Visualisation Tool, ESG toolkit, Policy-Support Decision Model (PSDM), and Serious Game, each designed to empower policymakers, civil society, industry, and researchers to navigate complex biodiversity–value chain interactions.
European Commission Insights: Frontier Research for Transformative Change
The European Research Council (ERC) contributed a dedicated session offering feedback and perspectives on the scientific landscape of transformative change. Through a presentation from the ERC Executive Agency, attendees explored insights from the 2024 report “Transformative Change for a Sustainable Future,” highlighting the crucial role of frontier research, and particularly social sciences and humanities, in driving systemic transitions. The presentation showcased exemplary ERC-funded projects addressing governance, justice, sustainable urban development, and biodiversity-related value chains, reinforcing BIOTRAILS’ alignment with broader EU ambitions.
TC Legacy Session: Strengthening Connections Across the Transformative Change Ecosystem
In the afternoon, BIOTRAILS partners engaged with sister initiatives, including IPBES-related actors, to identify synergies and co-design a common policy brief. This collaborative “write-a-thon” underscored the importance of building a cohesive science–policy interface and ensuring that project outputs contribute meaningfully to the Transformative Change Cluster and EU biodiversity goals.
Cross-Case Learning: Knowledge Exchange From BIOTRAILS’ Four Case Studies
The event continued with a dedicated Case Studies Knowledge Exchange Session, where partners from Ghana, Peru, Brazil, and Greece presented findings from their respective value chains—gold, cocoa, cultural handicrafts, and fisheries. The session explored common challenges, stakeholder dynamics, environmental and social impacts, and policy recommendations emerging from each region.
Moderated discussions allowed participants to reflect on cross-cutting themes such as:
- Enabling effective multi-stakeholder collaboration
- Addressing structural barriers to sustainable value chain transformation
- Identifying generalisable lessons across diverse socio-ecological contexts
A concluding panel conversation focused on how policy recommendations could be scaled and adopted, paving the way for more resilient, just, and biodiversity-friendly value chains.
Closing Reflections: Ensuring BIOTRAILS’ Legacy
In the final session of the day, the consortium synthesised key takeaways and discussed future pathways for capitalising on BIOTRAILS’ contributions. The emphasis was clear: while the project’s formal funding period has ended, the momentum toward transformative change must continue. Partners highlighted opportunities to integrate BIOTRAILS results into ongoing research, policy dialogues, and stakeholder initiatives, ensuring that the project’s insights remain active within and beyond the Transformative Change Cluster.
Looking Forward
The BIOTRAILS Final Event demonstrated not only the project’s scientific and methodological achievements but also the strength of its collaborative community. By bringing together voices from academia, civil society, industry, and policy, the event highlighted the transformative potential of co-designed approaches to biodiversity governance.