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

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.

Framing natural assets for advancing sustainability research: translating different perspectives into actions.

Sustainability is a key challenge for humanity in the context of complex and unprecedented global changes. Future Earth, an international research initiative aiming to advance global sustainability science, has recently launched knowledge-action networks (KANs) as mechanisms for delivering its research strategy. The research initiative is currently developing a KAN on "natural assets" to facilitate and enable action-oriented research and synthesis towards natural assets sustainability. 'Natural assets' has been adopted by Future Earth as an umbrella term aiming to translate and bridge across different knowledge systems and different perspectives on peoples' relationships with nature. In this paper, we clarify the framing of Future Earth around natural assets emphasizing the recognition on pluralism and identifying the challenges of translating different visions about the role of natural assets, including via policy formulation, for local to global sustainability challenges. This understanding will be useful to develop inter-and transdisciplinary solutions for human-environmental problems by (i) embracing richer collaborative decision processes and building bridges across different perspectives; (ii) giving emphasis on the interactions between biophysical and socioeconomic drivers affecting the future trends of investments and disinvestments in natural assets; and (iii) focusing on social equity, power relationships for effective application of the natural assets approach. This understanding also intends to inform the scope of the natural asset KAN's research agenda to mobilize the translation of research into co-designed action for sustainability.

A mid-term analysis of progress toward international biodiversity targets.

In 2010, the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related "Aichi Targets" to be achieved within a decade. We provide a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On current trajectories, results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis, the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020. We highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the Aichi Targets, and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress.

Biodiversity and ecosystem services science for a sustainable planet: the DIVERSITAS vision for 2012-20.

DIVERSITAS, the international programme on biodiversity science, is releasing a strategic vision presenting scientific challenges for the next decade of research on biodiversity and ecosystem services: "Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Science for a Sustainable Planet". This new vision is a response of the biodiversity and ecosystem services scientific community to the accelerating loss of the components of biodiversity, as well as to changes in the biodiversity science-policy landscape (establishment of a Biodiversity Observing Network - GEO BON, of an Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - IPBES, of the new Future Earth initiative; and release of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020). This article presents the vision and its core scientific challenges.