IPBES Assessment Reports

At the 11th Plenary the member states debated the Summaries for Policy Makers (SPMs) for two major assessments which have just been released. The first of these, the Nexus Assessment, explores the scientific connections between biodiversity, water, food and health in the context of climate change and makes recommendations as to how challenges in each of these must be addressed in an interconnected holistic manner. The plenary also debated the SPM for the Transformative Change Assessment, which explores some of the deeper drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change, including overconsumption, financial systems that prioritise growth, and the values that disconnect humans from nature. This pioneering report argues for the need for fundamental system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social spheres, including systems of governance and finance. It synthesises some 800+ future oriented visions for transformative change, such as regenerative and circular economies, and explores how different actors from governments, to business, civil society and citizens can engage in making such change happen.

These two newly released reports build from a series of important earlier assessments including on Invasive Alien Species and Sustainable Use of Wild Species and several more. IPBES is also pioneering in its incorporation of views from multiple non-governmental stakeholders and especially Indigenous and Local Communities (ILCs). Alongside extensive literature review, assessments benefit from a consultation programme dedicated to Indigenous and local knowledge and IPBES explicitly welcomes Indigenous authors on its teams. The platform has further established      self-organised stakeholder networks, including ONet (The Open-ended Network of IPBES Stakeholders) and IIFBES (International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services).

IPBES 11 also finalised the scoping document for the Second Global Assessment which is due to be delivered in 2028. This assessment will build from interim reports such as Nexus and Transformative Change, and update the latest scientific knowledge on biodiversity loss. Over five chapters, it will also consider why previous attempts to address biodiversity loss have failed and offer recommendations for future action. At the core of the assessment will be a full chapter on the role of Indigenous knowledge systems including concepts such as biocultural heritage.

Supporting indigenous and local bio-cultural heritage

In the first instance, there are opportunities to support indigenous and local communities in producing and preserving their own knowledge and to help facilitate their own engagement with and representation at IPBES. For example, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IIFBES) is facilitated by the Network of the Centres of Distinction on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (COD-ILK), a grouping of 13 global centres working with indigenous and local communities to generate, preserve and disseminate knowledge. There are clear opportunities to work with such centres, linking our research communities to these and through the dedicated programme and stakeholder network at IIFBES, helping to ensure that such critical knowledge is foregrounded within leading-edge biodiversity science.

Knowledge Gaps and new initiative on Crop (Bio)Diversity

IPBES also regularly produces details of current ‘knowledge gaps’ in their own reports and these offer considerable scope for critical research that directly frames itself in relation to the needs of contemporary policy science. For example, part of my own reason for attending the Plenary was to co-launch a Community of Practice to address one of these known knowledge gaps on crop diversity. Thanks to a small grant from the Research England Policy Support Fund, and with Franziska Fischer (an agricultural scientist from Cambridge and ONet) and Luigi Guarino (Chief Scientist at the Crop Trust), we were able to build awareness at IPBES11 Stakeholder Day of the potential for crop diversity research to address multiple aspects of the biodiversity crisis, and to network widely with leading biodiversity scientists, national member delegations, ILC representatives and other stakeholders. It is clear from previous IPBES reports and multiple conversations over the last week that there is a paucity of high-profile research into some cultural aspects of biodiversity, particularly diversity within domesticated species and among plants, animals and ecosystems that bridge the distinction between wild and domestic. Work on such bio-cultural heritage would clearly benefit from archaeological science, biological anthropology and critical heritage studies approaches, working both on deeper-time perspectives and on more contemporary issues, alongside existing communities. If you would like to join our Community of Practice on Crop biodiversity you can do so here.

Become a stakeholder

Secondly, there are multiple opportunities to become directly involved with IPBES’ various assessment reports, both as an early career and as an experienced researcher. It is possible to nominate colleagues to join IPBES as experts, or to register yourself to review draft assessment reports. Alternatively, you can work through a stakeholder network such as ONet to develop contributions via voluntary Communities of Practice. For example, IPBES strongly encourages Social Science and Humanities input and this has been particularly central to the new Transformative Change Assessment. Within ONet, you can find the Social Sciences and Humanities Network, originally a Community of Practice, that can help support and link SSH research into IPBES. Several conversations I had last week suggested that approaches rooted in a deeper-time perspective and with strong social and scientific attention to topics such as paleoecology, environmental and landscape history would be greatly appreciated. You can join ONet here and the SSH network here. Another option is to reach out to relevant national delegations and to work with them as an expert. For example in the UK, DEFRA leads on engagement with IPBES supported by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and our IPBES National Focal Point. You can join the JNCC IPBES stakeholder network here. It has also been confirmed that the UK will host the next IPBES Plenary session in 2026, so there may be more opportunities for UK-based academics to get involved.

Opportunities for impact

While the science policy space can clearly be daunting and it can be hard to see how our research may stand out amongst the wealth of research that already dominates such spheres, so far I have found IPBES to be an open and dynamic space that is working hard to engage stakeholders, Indigenous and Local Communities, and researchers from Social Science and Humanities backgrounds. Communities of Practice for example offer a very clear route for networks of like-minded researchers to develop their work and find support for translating this into the policy space. If you have any further queries about the above or on how you might get involved, please do not hesitate to contact me.