A new white paper: “From Knowledge to Solutions: Science, Technology and Innovation in Support of the UN SDGs”, published in the open-science scholarly journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), brings together leading voices from Europe’s biodiversity and data science communities to deliver a clear message: protecting biodiversity is not just an environmental issue. It is essential for food security, public health, climate stability, and the global economy.

The authors make a call for a decisive shift: from fragmented initiatives to a holistic, global approach to biodiversity research and policy, already demonstrated during a workshop at the 79th United Nations General Assembly and the Science Summit (UNGA79). A key part of this transformation concerns the role of research infrastructures in connecting science, technology, and policy: from vast biodiversity collections and genomic observatories, to ecosystem “digital twins” powered by supercomputers.

Behind the paper are a network of legal entities based in Europe and holding global interests, which includes biodiversity, ecology, and engineering communities, coordinated by the LifeWatch European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).

With their combined expertise and through European initiatives, such as Research Infrastructures, e-Infrastructures, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the Digital Twin projects and academic publishers, these communities provide a basis for collaboration in strategically contributing to the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (K-M GBF) targets.

The team urges for biodiversity to be placed at the centre of the upcoming 2026 UN Summit of the Future and become a core pillar of the agenda after the 2030 deadline for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). According to the authors, the UN Pact for the Future needs to include biodiversity as a core pillar: “not only of environmental sustainability, but of equity, security, and intergenerational justice”.

To do this, the authors propose the establishment of a global alliance that will strategically integrate biodiversity conservation into the core priorities of the UN Summit of the Future and the post-SDG agenda. This alliance is meant to join the voices of researchers, policymakers, indigenous knowledge holders, civil society, and industry to ensure that biodiversity underpins peace, prosperity, and justice as a universal enabler.

The white paper also demonstrates how the research infrastructures collectively contribute to the seven Strategic Considerations of the K-M GBF, outlined here in brief and further detailed in the full publication:

1. Contribution and rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities: Ensuring fair recognition and sharing of benefits with indigenous peoples and local communities, thus integrating their knowledge into biodiversity science.

2. Collective efforts towards the targets of the K-M GBF: Coordinating biodiversity monitoring, databases, and digital infrastructures to track progress towards global conservation targets.

3. Fulfilment of the three principal objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its protocols: Studying or supporting the study of all aspects of biodiversity; and providing public and streamlined access to biodiversity information.

4. Implementation through science, technology, and innovation: Developing and offering technologically advanced and novel solutions for research, data sharing and management to various users; and promoting open science by publishing research findings and increasingly sharing more facets of the research process.

5. Ecosystem approach: Developing and implementing technologies that enable a cross-domain, multidisciplinary approach to studying biodiversity and ecosystems; and using holistic, cross-disciplinary methods to understand and predict biodiversity and environmental dynamics.

6. Cooperation synergies: Collaborating with organisations responsible for implementing the CBD, policy agents, international research projects; and participating in international forums and social, scientific and technical initiatives.

7. Biodiversity and health linkages: Demonstrating how healthy ecosystems support human health, food security, and resilience to pandemics by supporting interdisciplinary research through bringing together knowledge and data and uncovering links and interactions between humans and the environment.

“With the UN’s ‘Pact for the Future’ currently being shaped, we see a unique opportunity to anchor biodiversity as a unifying thread across global goals that will transform how societies respond to the intertwined crises of climate change, nature loss, and pollution,” say the authors.

The white paper is the latest contribution to the LifeWatch ERIC Strategic Working Plan Outcomes open-science collection meant to provide a one-stop access point to the most important deliverables by the European biodiversity and ecosystem research infrastructure, which is currently undergoing a significant upgrade as a response to the needs of its target communities and stakeholders.