Joint call with Brazil - NWO Ecosystem restoration: the Brazilian Atlantic Forest as a case study

Researchers from the State of São Paulo, Brazil, and from the Netherlands can jointly apply for funding for the call 'Ecosystem restoration: the Brazilian Atlantic Forest as a case study'. Deadline of submissions is September 13, 2018. Aim of the NWO-FAPESP programme is to stimulate collaborations between researchers in order to help preserve, restore and promote sustainable use of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. The budget at NWO is € 1.5 million. FAPESP will match in terms of research effort.

Funding per project on the Dutch side is up to € 350,000. 

The call is to fund joint research projects that will focus on ecosystem services, multi-functional landscape use and biodiversity, with the ultimate aim to contribute to effective restoration and sustainable use of the Atlantic Forest. There are three priority themes:

• Linking regeneration (both passive -natural regeneration- and active -human induced restoration through, for instance, tree planting-) to ecosystem services and the traits expected to be expressed (for instance nutrient cycles, seed dispersal, pollination, etc.);
• Upscaling restoration towards the goals set (inter)nationally (using a landscape, map-based approach);
• Highlighting how Nature benefits People (multi-functional landscape, political trends, costs-and-benefits [economic, social and ecological]).

At least two out of three priority themes must be addressed in every research proposal, in order to stimulate both coherence of the programme and interdisciplinary research. Both FAPESP and NWO explicitly encourage applicants to combine approaches from different fields of knowledge in order to arrive at comprehensive solutions.