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

Second plenary day IPBES

Long day, slow pace and wrong direction

Disclaimer: the views expressed hereby represent the personal impressions and opinion of the writer, and do not attempt to represent SCB as a whole.

After a relatively short day yesterday, today everyone again bunkered in enormous windowless Plenary rooms named Maximus, little suspecting we would still be there 13 hours later. In the morning the Plenary established three Contact Groups (CGs), which are ‘smaller’ meetings between the IPBES Members, to discuss point-by-point, line-by-line the documents that will hopefully be approved at the end of this week. At lunch, the Contact Group for the Budget met; the CG for the Work Programme and Conceptual Framework as well as the CG for Procedures started work at 5pm, working all the way through to 22:30 with a break for dinner.

Joining the CG for Procedures, review started upbeat, with two decisions in quick succession: IPBES would adopt the historical UN Regional groupings into the future for IPBES, and second, that the number of persons in the so called “Multidisciplinary Expert Panel” (MEP) from each of these regions will foreseeably remain at five.

After these decisions, however, the situation rapidly unwinded. We spent thirty minutes discussing whether definitions of terms needed to be added to the beginning of the Procedures document, or whether it was sufficient to document them separately. At around 9pm, Argentina threw a major spanner in the works by stating that the process of acceptance-adoption-approval of reports were not only not understandable, but unacceptable to them. Despite Bob Watson’s emphatic insistence that the procedure was exactly the same as the IPCC procedure, Argentina resisted and insisted that IPBES was not the IPCC, that the introduction of the ‘validation’ concept was legally unique, and that without further legal clarity with rules, there could be no progress on this section. Post-square-bracketing, the CG moved on to an issue that made your two SCB delegates sit up nice and tall: the issue of whether Stakeholders would have the privilege of nominating experts into the process, alongside States?

Very much to our surprise, this appears to not be a straightforward decision by the Members that were in the room, with several (USA, Canada) expressing that they were yet to hold an opinion, while Egypt, Japan, Russia and Argentina were not in favour of direct stakeholder nominations. The EU, led by Lithuania, expressed that they supported nominations by stakeholders.

This is clearly a red line issue for SCB – and IPBES. If stakeholders’ expertise and right to participate in an effective way are not recognised, IPBES risks losing its connection to the scientific community. IPBES will then not only miss the chance to utilize the scientific network for identifying experts, but even more sever – if only governments can suggest experts, the whole process will be seen as political and lacking scientific credibility. The SCB delegation went to bed worried and probably slept uneasy. 

Eszter Kovacs (ESSRG) with support from others

IPBES Plenary Day 1: Health care for Mother Earth?

Disclaimer: the views expressed hereby represent the personal impressions and opinion of the writer, and do not attempt to represent SCB as a whole.

IPBES continues to grow. There are now 115 members, and over 100 listed observers. About thirty new observers were admitted today without discussion, and the Plenary moved smoothly into presentations of the Work Programme, the Conceptual Framework and the Budget.

Now, if you thought that the name IPBES might imply focus on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the Conceptual Framework may surprise you. IPBES starts with talking about “Nature”, “Mother Earth” and “System of Life”. If we (scientists) consider ecosystems as supporting “Quality of Life” or “human wellbeing”, the Conceptual Framework attempts adds the terms “Living in harmony with nature” and “living in balance with Mother Earth”. Sounds strange? Not if you listen to Bolivia’s support of the Conceptual Framework versus its harsh comments on the Work Programme  (Hereafter, WP if you don’t mind).

The point is that being inclusive requires consideration of other schools of thought and other vision of the world. As well explained at the plenary, the MEP has made huge efforts to translate western terms into world-encompassing ones, while trying not to lose pragmatism on the way. The outcome is quite impressive, even if thought-provoking.

Notably, however, as the Conceptual Framework was developed only after the WP, which was written only after the Stakeholder Engagement Strategy, the three simply don’t align well with each other. As Bolivia put it: the Assessments are severely plagued with a western, colonialist, capitalistic approach which views the world through money. True, one has to admit, but the good thing is that this can still be rectified.

Coming to money, though, our SCB delegation maintains some serious concerns. IPBES’s suggested budget for 2014-2018 was set at merely $39 million. For the size of such a Platform this is actually quite cheap. The sum is reachable, and Norway alone agreed to offer $8 million to support. But would it be sufficient? SCB and other organizations see a major gap: even if approved and supported, too little budget is currently allocated to supporting the engagement of stakeholders – without which, how exactly can IPBES deliver?!

Following short contemplation, we decided SCB should make its own intervention at the opening Plenary. We raised a hand, marked a wish, and were nearly to give up - when suddenly the opportunity fell on us due to a minor error: we were erroneously recognized as Saudi Arabia by the Chair, meaning that we had a priority over 8 other interventions… Excited but concrete, Bege raised our concerns about the limited funding for stakeholder involvement, the need to make reference to the Aichi targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the lack of concrete plans on how to secure a bottom up, regionalized structure of IPBES – which SCB can support through its structure.

SCB’s statement closed the day, and offered an immediate opportunity for unofficial  discussions.

Guy Pe’er, Antalya.

Picture: Bengt Gunnar Jonsson (Bege, Middle, in white) speaking up at the Plenary. Picture: Andras Baldi (MEP member)

What is a stakeholder, really?

IPBES Stakeholder Day:

 What is a stakeholder, really?

(the following blog reflects the personal views and not the general opinions of the attendants at the IPBES Plenary)

Two days of stakeholder discussions have ended. Networking among the large and heterogeneous groups of stakeholders is a core activity for the SCB delegation during this IPBES meeting. Among us, all agree that stakeholders have clear importance to the success of IPBES. We also managed quite smoothly in discussing topics such as internal organization and management among the stakeholders.  The challenge is now how to make governments accept  this view, and provide the stakeholders with sufficient influence and resources to enable our contributions. For that purpose, a joint statement is being prepared for the start of the plenary meeting tomorrow morning. It will address our commitment to IPBES, communicate the importance of endorsing and implementing the stakeholder engagement strategy, but also highlight some concerns expressed by the stakeholders. For example, one issue which we raised during the discussions was that stakeholders must have the possibility to nominate experts to the working groups.

The only issue of obvious disagreement among the stakeholders actually relates to the term “stakeholder” itself. This expression does not reflect the status of indigenous people and hence they feel not fully respected in the process. However, the term stakeholder seems to be already so established within IPBES that no other identifier besides the Members of the Platform exists. This, evidently, complicates our own internal communication. When reflecting on this problem we realize that it is also difficult for others since it suggest that we are more “down the line” rather than being central contributors to IPBES. The other term used is “Observers” which is the role of SCB and other Stakeholder organizations in the Plenary meeting. This is even worse since it suggests no other role apart from sitting on the side-bench and listening. Some suggested the term “Partners” must be used – other said it’s risky. A small identity crisis? For us it’s something to reflect upon during the evening in the piano bar, but other people will likely reflect much more ferociously during the Plenary itself.

Blog provided today by Bege Jonsson with support from Guy Pe'er and others

Securing the voice of science

Securing the voice of science – Next IPBES plenary coming up next week (December 9-14)

Last year the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was established. With the ambition of being a parallel to the climate change panel (IPCC), the upcoming meeting will be the first real test for this “new born baby”. During a week of negotiations the 115 member countries will attempt to establish the programme of work for 2014-2018 as well is finalizing a set of formal procedures. If successful, it would mean that real work could start and slowly credible and independent summaries of critical knowledge will be synthesized. As being representatives for SCB we hope to establish good working relations with other knowledge holders and guard the scientific independence of IPBES. We intend to keep you updated by regularly writing short reports on this blog.

Bege Jonsson 

 

The SCB delegation is composed of

Bege Jonsson, Sweden
Cagan Sekercioglu, USA & Turkey
Eszter Krasznai Kovács, UK & Hungary
Guy Pe’er, Germany & Israel
Teuta Skorin, Croatia