Five Major New IPBES Assessment Reports will be launched in March 2018

In March, 2018, representatives of 127 Governments will receive, for approval, five landmark assessment reports describing the state of knowledge about biodiversity, ecosystems and nature’s contributions to people.

Prepared by more than 550 leading international experts from more than 100 countries, working with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the evaluations cover four world regions — the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe and Central Asia, i.e. the whole world except Antarctica and the open oceans. The reports are scheduled for public launch in Medellín, Colombia at the 6th annual session of the IPBES Plenary (#IPBES6) in March 2018.

A fifth IPBES assessment report, also due to be approved and launched at the same meeting, examines land degradation and restoration, both regionally and globally.

IPBES is the global science-policy platform tasked with providing the best-available evidence to inform better decisions affecting nature - by Governments, businesses and even individual households. IPBES is often described as ‘the IPCC for biodiversity’.

The findings of the five IPBES reports will also be key inputs to a new comprehensive IPBES global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, due for release in 2019, the first such evaluation since the authoritative 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

In addition, the assessment reports will evaluate lessons learned and progress (or the lack thereof) on the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the implications for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as other global environmental agreements. The reports will also provide vital information for setting biodiversity targets for the period after 2020.

Biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people underpin the economies, livelihoods, food security and quality of life of people everywhere. This is why public policies, business decisions and even individual lifestyle preferences can threaten or support nature’s contributions to people and the sustainable future we want. Keeping ecosystems resilient, and safeguarding our planet’s variety of life, is fundamental to poverty eradication, human health and well-being.

Three years in development, at a total cost of about US$5 million, the four IPBES regional assessment reports have involved over 550 experts from more than 100 countries, who have reviewed several thousand scientific papers, Government and other information sources, including indigenous and local knowledge. The aim is to arrive at conclusions about each region’s land-based, freshwater and coastal biodiversity, as well as the state of ecosystem functioning and nature’s contributions to people.

The reports will evaluate the status of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to good quality of life in each region and their respective subregions, describing current status and trends, as well as their links to drivers of change and threats, identifying policy-relevant issues affecting them. The analyses will start by looking back several decades and then project likely interactions between people and nature for decades into the future, based on different decision pathways.

Launch venue: IPBES-6, Intercontinental Hotel, Medellín, Colombia; March 17-24, 2018.

Direct link to the 6 primers (available in several languages) https://www.ipbes.net/ipbes-6-primers

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