Funding

Backed by £54m, this programme sits within the Engineering Ecosystem Resilience opportunity space and seeks to explore pathways to accelerate the adaptation of wild species in order to prevent biodiversity loss and secure the natural infrastructure that underpins our global economy and well-being.

The programme seeks to fund interdisciplinary teams developing approaches to accelerating adaptation in wild species, modelling impacts of interventions, and exploring ethical and governance implications.

Technical Areas

• TA1 Systems: Demonstrate accelerated adaptation in specific systems (species, ecosystems, ecological functions).
• TA2 Scaling: Scale the technical capabilities of the tools developed by the system-focused teams to apply to multiple systems.
• TA3 Modelling: Model which species, traits and interventions produce disproportionate ecosystem resilience gains, and quantify risks.
• TA4 Data + analytics: Ensure that claims made by system-focused teams are independently checked and make results comparable, trusted and legible.
• TA5 Ethics + social responsibility: This broad TA could include, but is not limited to, co-developing ESR tools, frameworks and guidance; delivering training to project teams; producing evidence that could inform future governance models/regulatory pathways.

Eligibility

We invite applications from interdisciplinary teams bridging fields including ecology, evolution, biological engineering, conservation, ethics, robotics, and AI. Applicants can be from universities, research institutes, non-profits, startups, companies, or individuals based in the UK or abroad.