BIOLOGUE Project Launches to Transform How Europe Talks About Biodiversity

A new European research initiative is setting out to change not what we know about the biodiversity crisis, but how we talk about it. BIOLOGUE, a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, officially began on 1 September 2026 with a mission that is as much social as it is scientific: to understand how different groups across Europe perceive biodiversity, and to use that understanding to build more inclusive, more effective conversations between experts, policymakers, media and the public. The project’s full title, UNDERSTANDING BIODIVERSITY PERCEPTIONS FOR INCLUSIVE DIALOGUES AND COMMUNICATION ON BIODIVERSITY, POLICY IMPLEMENTATION AND MANAGEMENT, signals its ambition to treat communication itself as a critical piece of the conservation puzzle.

The project is coordinated by Wageningen University in the Netherlands, one of the world’s leading institutions in environmental and life sciences research. It brings together a consortium of ten partners from eight European countries: the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Italy, Belgium and Bulgaria. This geographic and disciplinary spread is deliberate. The fragmented and often inconsistent understanding of biodiversity across Europe is one of the problems BIOLOGUE was designed to address, and a consortium that spans north and south, east and west of the continent is better placed to capture the full range of perspectives, values and conflicts that shape the debate.

From 23 to 25 September 2026, the consortium gathered in Bonn, Germany, for its kick-off meeting, hosted by the European Forest Institute, an international organisation with deep expertise in forest-related policy and research. The meeting was the first time all partners came together in person, and it served as the working launch of the project. Each partner presented its plans, core objectives and end goals, and the group discussed how it will collaborate over the coming years. Crucially, the Bonn meeting laid the foundation for the first concrete steps towards what the project calls transforming biodiversity conversation between stakeholders, experts and society.

The rationale behind BIOLOGUE rests on a diagnosis that will be familiar to anyone following European environmental policy. Climate change and biodiversity loss are widely described as a systemic, intertwined crisis, and addressing it demands not only sound science but also social trust, shared understanding and broad engagement. Yet the biodiversity conversation in Europe is fractured. Debates over nature restoration, competing framings of what nature is worth, and the plural values that different actors assign to ecosystems have produced a landscape of misunderstanding and mistrust. BIOLOGUE’s central premise is that these communication failures are not a side issue but a significant driver of the crisis itself, and that repairing them can unlock better policy and better outcomes on the ground.

To do this, the project will deploy a suite of innovative methods, beginning at continental scale. BIOLOGUE will run EU-wide surveys designed to map how Europeans perceive biodiversity, giving policymakers an evidence base they can use to navigate differences in opinion and propose long-lasting solutions. These surveys will function as a systematic listening exercise, capturing the views of citizens and stakeholders across member states rather than relying on the anecdotal impressions that so often dominate policy debates. The ambition is to replace assumption with measurement, and to give decision-makers a clearer picture of where societal views align with, or diverge from, the direction of policy.

A second strand of work brings artificial intelligence into the analysis of public discourse. The project will apply AI-driven analysis to online texts and images, using computational methods to identify actor clusters, value conflicts and opportunities for constructive dialogue and cooperation in biodiversity conservation. In practice, this means scanning the vast, noisy landscape of digital communication to find where different communities stand, where their framings clash, and where common ground might exist. Rather than treating online disagreement as an obstacle, BIOLOGUE aims to mine it for insight, locating the fault lines along which dialogue could either collapse or, with the right intervention, become productive.

Bringing people together is the task of the project’s stakeholder engagement platform, known as the Dialogue Co-Lab. This wide-ranging platform is designed to bridge institutional silos and foster mutual learning between actors who are often disconnected: scientists who rarely meet communicators, policymakers who rarely hear from local practitioners, and civil society groups whose perspectives seldom reach the rooms where decisions are made. By creating a structured space for exchange, the Dialogue Co-Lab aims to turn the fragmented cast of European biodiversity actors into a network capable of learning from one another and building shared positions.

Communication itself will be tested and refined through practice. The project will co-design, test and deliver innovative online and offline communication on biodiversity through six Communication Pilots and thirty Inspirational Case Studies. These pilots and case studies will serve as living laboratories, where new approaches to conveying the biodiversity crisis can be tried, evaluated and adapted. The co-design element matters: rather than broadcasting messages at audiences, BIOLOGUE intends to develop communication together with the people it is meant to reach, reflecting the project’s broader commitment to inclusivity. The resulting lessons will feed into a repository of best practices in stakeholder engagement and communication.

The project’s most visible legacy will take the form of two online resources. The first is the European Biodiversity Barometer, described as the first of its kind, which will compile findings on biodiversity perceptions across the continent in a single, continuously updated reference. The second is the Biodiversity Communication Toolbox, a repository of best practices in stakeholder engagement and communication that practitioners, institutions and communicators can draw on long after the project ends. Together, these tools are intended to help European policymakers better understand societal views on biodiversity and to provide instruments for inclusive decision-making, while also giving society a clearer understanding of the biodiversity crisis and empowering diverse groups to take part in the conversation.

Taken together, BIOLOGUE’s approaches are designed to deliver comprehensive knowledge on biodiversity perceptions, introduce new communication approaches, and apply inclusive dialogues spanning science, policy, society and media. The project’s stated end goal is to ensure the implementation of transformed and strengthened inclusive biodiversity policies across Europe. Whether that goal is achieved will depend on the coming years of surveys, pilots and dialogues, but the project’s launch marks a notable shift in emphasis: a recognition that the words, values and trust surrounding biodiversity are not peripheral to the crisis, but central to resolving it. BIOLOGUE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101287518, and the project team is sharing updates on its activities through its public channels as the work begins.

Subject of Research: Biodiversity perceptions, communication and inclusive stakeholder dialogue in European policy

Article Title: Biodiversity conversation is on the brink of change as the BIOLOGUE project has been launched

Article References: Biodiversity conversation is on the brink of change as the BIOLOGUE project has been launched. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: BIOLOGUE, biodiversity, Horizon Europe, Wageningen University, science communication, stakeholder engagement, biodiversity policy, European Biodiversity Barometer, AI text analysis, Dialogue Co-Lab, climate change, European Forest Institute