Ministry of Environmental Protection

Their core work

Israel's Ministry of Environmental Protection is the national governmental body responsible for environmental regulation, nature protection, biodiversity conservation, and climate policy across Israel. In European research networks, they participate as a national funding agency partner within ERA-NET Cofund programs, co-funding transnational research calls and participating in joint scientific governance alongside European national funding bodies. Their role in H2020 is to connect Israeli researchers to European biodiversity and climate research programs, while bringing the authority of a national environmental regulator — including real-world policy implementation, protected area management, and conservation mandates — to international science networks. They operate firmly at the science-policy interface, with influence over how research outputs are translated into regulatory practice.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the first project (BiodivERsA3, from 2015), the focus was on the foundational pillars of biodiversity science: ecosystem services, conservation, restoration, and stakeholder-facing policy dialogue — a broad framing consistent with consolidating a European research area. By 2019 and the BiodivClim project, the emphasis shifted to explicitly linking biodiversity with climate change, introducing concepts like mitigation, adaptation, nature's contribution to people (NCP), and socio-ecological systems governance. This reflects a wider field-level transition from treating biodiversity and climate as separate agendas toward integrating them, and the ministry followed — and in some sense co-funded — that transition through its ERA-NET participation.

Their trajectory points toward climate-biodiversity policy integration and inter-disciplinary governance frameworks — making them a relevant partner for any future consortium working on nature-based climate solutions that needs a national regulatory or policy anchor in Israel or the broader Mediterranean region.

How they like to work

This ministry has participated exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator, across both projects — consistent with their role as a national co-funding body within ERA-NET Cofund structures rather than a research-executing institution. Both projects are large transnational consortia (ERA-NET Cofund by design involves dozens of national agencies and research funders), which explains the unusually high partner count of 47 across 28 countries for only two projects. They are built for broad network participation, not for leading projects directly.

Despite only two projects, this ministry has exposure to 47 unique consortium partners across 28 countries — a consequence of joining ERA-NET Cofund programs that are by nature large, pan-European (and beyond) research funding networks. Their reach is genuinely global in geographic terms, connecting Israel to European and international biodiversity research communities.

What sets them apart

As Israel's national environmental regulator, this ministry is one of the very few non-EU governmental bodies participating in H2020 biodiversity research networks, giving it a distinctive Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ecological perspective that is underrepresented in European consortia. Their value to a consortium is not primarily scientific output, but rather policy authority, national funding leverage, and the ability to anchor research in regulatory practice — which matters enormously for projects targeting policy impact or nature-based solution uptake. If a consortium needs a credible governmental partner that connects EU biodiversity science to Israeli conservation frameworks and national implementation, this ministry is the natural choice.

Highlights from their portfolio

• BiodivClim
  The larger-funded project (EUR 42,060) and the more ambitious in scope, explicitly bridging biodiversity conservation with climate change mitigation and adaptation through transnational joint programming running to 2025.
• BiodivERsA3
  The foundational ERA-NET project consolidating the European biodiversity research area, with explicit science-society and policy dialogue components that align directly with a national ministry's mandate.