The Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has launched a call for grants to promote the bioeconomy as a driver of development and conservation. This call, framed in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), has received a total of 132 projects.

The Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has launched a call for grants to promote the bioeconomy as a driver of development and conservation. For this call, framed in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), a total of 132 proposals have been received.

The objective of these grants is to identify transformative initiatives that promote the bioeconomy, understood as an opportunity to show that the conservation of natural resources can go hand in hand with activities that generate economic and social development.

This line of aid has an endowment of 20 million euros, between 250,000 and 2 million euros per project, and the total requested amounts to 147 million. Therefore, only approximately 15% of the proposals submitted can be supported, depending on the amount requested for each project. Given the success of the call, work is currently underway to mobilise more funds to maintain these subsidy lines in the future.

This call is of great importance to promote development in the rural world through new productive activities or other more traditional ones that are sustainable, such as organic farming, extensive livestock, beekeeping or sustainable forest management, among others.

In this sense, 55 projects have been presented aimed at promoting sustainable agricultural, livestock and forestry systems, 17 projects aimed at ecological restoration, 22 initiatives for platforms or improvement of knowledge on bioeconomy, 12 related to the development of bioproducts, biofuels or use of biomass or 17 pilot projects of bioeconomy in territories, among others.

In addition, in order to continue supporting these initiatives, a call for the renaturation of urban river sections for flood risk reduction is still open, which has a budget of 75 million euros and is aimed at all Spanish local entities. The deadline for submitting projects is March 16, 2022. All the information on this call can be consulted at the following link.

MORE THAN 530 MILLION EUROS

From Fundación Biodiversidad we have launched five calls within the framework of Component 4 of the RTRP, published on October 4 and whose deadline for submitting projects ended on January 3, obtaining an extraordinary demand for funds.

A total of 382 projects have been submitted to these five calls, which have a budget of 88.7 million euros, requesting a global grant of 532 million euros. For grants for research programmes and projects in the field of biodiversity management, 107 proposals have been received, for a total of 31.6 million euros, compared to the 2.5 million euros available in this call.

For the reinforcement of stranding and rescue networks of marine species, 25 projects have been presented, with a total amount of 7.5 million euros, compared to the 4.25 million euros available. The grants aimed at supporting the rescue centers of the CITES Convention have received 19 proposals, requesting a total of 3.4 million euros. Finally, for the promotion of actions aimed at the renaturalisation and resilience of Spanish cities, 99 projects have been presented with a total amount of 346 million euros, compared to the 58 million euros available.