Stakeholder participation in IPBES: connecting local environmental work with global decision making

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services(IPBES) strengthens the science-policy interface by producing scientific assessments on biodiversity and ecosystem services to inform policy. IPBES fosters knowledge exchange across disciplines, between researchers and other knowledge holders, practitioners, societal actors and decision makers working at different geographic scales. A number of avenues for participation of stakeholders across the four functions if IPBES exist. Stakeholders come from diverse backgrounds, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, businesses, and non-governmental organization. They represent multiple sources of information, data, knowledge, and perspectives on biodiversity. Stakeholder engagement in IPBES seeks to 1. communicate, disseminate, and implement the findings of IPBES products; 2. Develop guidelines for biodiversity conservation within member countries; and 3. create linkages between global policy and local actors – all key to the implementation of global agreements on biodiversity. This paper reflects on the role of stakeholders in the first work programme of IPBES (2014–2018). It provides an overview of IPBES processes and products relevant to stakeholders, examines the motivation of stakeholders to engage with IPBES, and explores reflections by the authors (all active participants on the platform) for improved stakeholder engagement and contributions to future work of the platform.

The science-policy interface on ecosystems and people: challenges and opportunities

“…Science-policy interfaces can help speed up linking science findings to policy development and implementation (Crouzat et al 2019;Krug et al 2020;Stevance et al 2020). Researchers working at the interface of science and policy have a crucial and urgent role to play at generating the knowledge decision makers need to act swiftly (Crouzat et al 2019;Gustafsson et al 2019;Krug et al 2020;Stevance et al 2020;Washbourne et al 2020). This is particularly relevant for the case of the linkages between ecosystems and people, and the need to speedily limit climate change and biodiversity loss below threatening levels.…”

“…Disruptive events like the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate the magnitude of the impacts from unsustainable and inappropriate management of ecosystems, yet provide opportunities to build a more resilient planet (Gordon 2020). Action to revert current trends in conservation, and to promote wise use and management of nature is deeply felt and urgently needed where science-policy interfaces have a key role to play (Crouzat et al 2019;Krug et al 2020;Stevance et al 2020).…”

“…The media coverage of a result of the IPBES assessment, on the up to 1,000,000 species of animals and plants possibly at risk of extinction in the nearterm (IPBES 2019; Díaz et al 2019), have put for the first time ever the nature crisis in the news at least 2,200 different news sites across 115 countries, in 35 languages, reaching an audience of 3.26 billion people. 1 Communication with different audiences and stakeholders has been shown to be critical to the success and impact of IPBES (Krug et al 2020;Stevance et al 2020). Sustained participatory interactions have been shown to be critical for other sciencepolicy interfaces operating at national scales, e.g.…”

“…As a specific example, Pandit et al (2020) show the effectiveness of community forestry policy as an indirect response to address forest land degradation in Nepal by actively engaging people in addressing environmental problems. Krug et al (2020) illustrate how the inclusion of a wide diversity of stakeholders helps integrate diverse forms of knowledge and perspectives in IPBES processes.…”

“…Crouzat et al (2019) discuss the roles of stakeholders' participation in ecosystem assessments for increasing the robustness and possible uptake of key messages. Krug et al (2020) provide examples of how stakeholders contribute to IPBES processes, and how they take up and further disseminate key findings from the products of the platform.…”