Wilderness

New COST project opportunity on Wilderness research

19-03-20 Announcement: Due to the current situation, the call for interested partners has been extended to May 30th.

The European Wilderness Society is planning to submit a new project on Wilderness Research. The project will be submitted to the European COST programme. This is an EU funding programme that financially supports projects that create Europe-wide research networks and foster transboundary cooperation. It helps for example organisations and researchers to share ideas and experiences, define new concepts and develop innovative research projects.

The project will be Pan-European, focusing on networking activities for research in European Wilderness. The few places left in Europe that we can call Wilderness are governed by natural open-ended dynamic processes. Therefore, studying these processes provides a baseline for understanding how human activities impact natural processes and ecosystem services. So far, most research in Wilderness has been performed in tropical regions, resulting in a great knowledge gap on Wilderness in Europe. The Wilderness Resolution accepted by the European Parliament in 2009 calls for research in Wilderness to fill this gap, which will be addressed by this project. This project aims to do this by bringing multidisciplinary experts together for bottom-up networking and exchange activities.

Quick facts

  • Project start: July 2021
  • Duration: 4 years
  • Total budget: approximately € 500.000,-
  • Partnership: 20-25 partners, minimum 50% from Inclusiveness Target Countries (see in the list of eligible countries). Young researchers and post-docs are particularly welcome.
  • Eligible partners: any type of institution from eligible countries (see below)
  • Submission deadline: October 29th 2020

Project topic

This project will be output and impact-oriented, with a specific focus on:

  1. establishing common ground on Wilderness definition and Wilderness research ethics.
  2. comparing and evaluating research methodology for Wilderness, to establish a common set of methods and research techniques used that meet the Wilderness research ethics standards.
  3. specific Wilderness-related challenges regarding invasive species, tourism and climate change.

The project will focus on Working Group meetings, training schools, short-term scientific missions (6-month exchanges), and dissemination activities.

Please have a look at the list of eligible countries in the file available for download below.

If interested, please contact us by the 30th of May on the form below.

COST Project form application

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