The BIOMOT project (MOTivational strength of ecosystem services and alternative ways to express the value of BIOdiversity) addresses the problem of building and sustaining motivation to act for biodiversity by means of a comprehensive rethinking of what value and motivation actually are for people.

Many economists and ecologists claim that biodiversity has total economic values running into the trillions of euros worldwide and hundreds of millions even for 'minor' ecosystem services on local scales. The problem addressed by the BIOMOT project is that, in spite of these immense values, biodiversity in Europe is still declining. Politicians and the public in general in Europe do not appear to respond swiftly and effectively to prevent further biodiversity degradation. Why is that? Why are total economic values not compelling? What could really work to motivate publics and politics into action for biodiversity?

Scientific research can help address this challenge by means of a comprehensive rethinking of what value and motivation actually are for people. On this insight then, practical guidelines for methods and languages with greater motivational capacity can be built.

The BIOMOT, funded by the EUs research programme FP7, takes this relatively 'deep' approach of investigation. This implies that we can (and need) to exploit the full richness of scientific disciplines that relate to BIOMOT's main question. Primarily, these disciplines are:

BIOMOT is organized along these disciplinary lines, but then of course faces the challenge of how to remain truly comprehensive and interdisciplinary. At this point, BIOMOT engages the power of philosophy to act in its classic role of the 'mother discipline'. The philosophers in BIOMOT have both a critical and a synthetic role. Critically, they analyse the underlying assumptions of the other disciplines and propose improvements. Synthetically, they help build the common framework and the common outputs of the project.

Project leaflet