Short report on IPBES events, in conjunction with SCB and ICCB-ECCB 2015

IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is a major initiative of governments to copy the success of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) in the topics of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These are in the focus of conservation biology, and of SCB as well. Our society was involved into the development of IPBES from the very beginning, and still active stakeholder to IPBES. After more than a year of development IPBES get to more visible activities, like the recent meetings on “Guide on production and integration of assessments from and across all scales”, and the “Regional scoping for a set of regional and subregional assessments”. Both deliverables had meeting in Paris, 13-16 August for the Guide, and 17-22 August for the Regional scoping. The Regional scoping is of extreme importance for the academic and non-academic communities, as it defines what regional assessments will be, which are the regions, what are the major policy questions to be addressed, etc. Nearly a hundred experts were involved into the scoping meeting, and many hundreds from around the globe will work in the assessments, including natural and social scientists, and indigeneous and local knowledge holders.

At the recent meeting Piero Visconti, co-chair of ICCB-ECCB 2015 Scientific Committee, Georgina Mace SCB past president and myself SCB-Europe president were invited to the scoping meeting in Paris. In addition, Salvatore Arico from the host organisation (UNESCO), past board member of SCB-Europe was present. Piero and myself initiated discussions with a number of experts about ICCB. We beleive that ICCB can be the best forum to present the first outputs of IPBES to the wide conservation community of c. 2000 participants in Montpellier. Anne Larigauderie, IPBES executive secretary, will give a plenary talk at the congress, and other activities on IPBES are also under planning.

Be prepared – ICCB-ECCB 2015 is approaching! 

Call for symposia is out (http://iccb-eccb2015.org/).

ICCB-ECCB 2015 poster presented at IPBES meeting, with Anne and myself.

András Báldi