CICLES 2025, the annual report of a year that has sought to turn challenges into opportunities

How can we turn environmental challenges into opportunities? This is one of the ideas that runs through CREAF's new annual report for the year 2025 published today. As every year, the document adopts an online and printed magazine format to offer a closer, visual and attractive look at the work done at the center, beyond data and indicators.

Thus, this new edition revolves around the concept of opportunity, understood as a way to face the great challenges of the present and, at the same time, to build new answers for the future . New scientific questions, alliances, tools and ways of transferring knowledge can become levers to advance towards more resilient territories and towards a more sustainable society.

The report includes the main advances of CREAF during 2025 in areas such as research, talent management, internationalization, open science or impact , among others. A stage in which, despite the context of political and economic uncertainty, the center has maintained its capacity for growth and has achieved new results. Among these, the A rating in the new evaluation of the CERCA Institution stands out, as well as the maximum rating obtained in the two impact narratives presented in the Research Impact Assessment (RIA).

2025 has also been a year of deployment of the Severo Ochoa Program, with new initiatives to promote transformative science and excellent management. The deployment of the technical research coordination figure, the CoARA Plan and the Open Science Plan are some of the projects developed within this framework. CREAFBRUX, the CREAF office in Brussels, has also been launched, designed to strengthen the center's European presence and facilitate new connections with research networks and the acquisition of competitive funds.

The report also presents a selection of the research carried out at CREAF through reports, interviews and opinion letters. Biodiversity, forests, rural and mountain development, agriculture, water and ecological restoration are some of the areas that play a leading role. Among the contents of this edition, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the MiraMon SIG, talk about the new digital forest installed in Collserola and talk to Sebastià and Carme, two retired volunteers linked to an emblematic CREAF citizen science project. We also interview Andrea Arnal, who has been coordinating the Esfera Climàtica journalistic innovation project for two years. The stories explain how scientific knowledge helps to understand the changes that the planet is experiencing and, increasingly, to translate this understanding into concrete decisions and actions that can transform a territory, a neighbourhood or a specific person.

This connection between science and action is precisely the guiding principle of the letter of introduction to the report signed by Secretary General Jordi Sargatal, which presents the ecological transition as an opportunity for social and economic transformation. The conservation of biodiversity and the restoration of ecosystems can contribute to building a more resilient country, with healthy ecosystems capable of continuing to provide essential services for society.

An ongoing example of this is the approval and deployment of the Intersectoral Plan for the Conservation of Wild Pollinators of Catalonia (PIPOL), the promotion of ecological restoration or collaboration with other Mediterranean regions on climate change adaptation.

The annual report is also a portrait of the current situation at CREAF: a centre that is growing, consolidating its capabilities and strengthening its alliances, but which still has important challenges ahead. Among them, having more space and laboratories, improving working conditions and continuing to offer development opportunities to research staff are some of the most immediate objectives.

In his letter, the director of CREAF, Joan Pino, highlights precisely the team's ability to face adversity and transform challenges into new possibilities. A strength that has marked 2025 and that also points towards the future.

The new annual report thus captures a year of work, but also a way of understanding the role of science in the face of the great changes we face: identifying challenges, generating knowledge and finding ways for this knowledge to become opportunities for action.