Eco-Business

July 14, 2022
One in five people rely on wild species for income and food, while one in three rely on wood fuel for cooking, according to a major new report. Its authors aim to demonstrate how the use of wild species is far more prevalent than most people realise and that the decline of nature threatens human lives and livelihoods.

The report follows four years of work by 85 experts in the natural and social sciences and holders of indigenous and local knowledge around the world. They were working under the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a  body set up to advise policymakers on biodiversity.

In 2019, IPBES warned that one million species were at risk of extinction. It found that over-exploitation of wild species was the second-largest driver of this trend for species living on land or freshwater, after land degradation and habitat destruction. For marine species, over-exploitation is the biggest driver.

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Green Queen

June 25, 2021
Until now, many of our global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change have been done separately from each other. Scientists are now calling for a new approach that takes both issues as intrinsically linked—we can’t solve one without the other.  

This is the core message of what is the first collaborative report between experts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). According to the team of 50 scientists selected by the 12-person committee selected by the two bodies, biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and are mutually reinforcing. 

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World Economic Forum

June 21, 2021
The twin crises of nature loss and climate change are inextricably linked. For too long, however, biodiversity loss and climate change have been discussed and dealt with in siloes, even by independent international frameworks of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We may, however, be at an important turning point.

For the first time, intergovernmental scientific bodies for each global challenge, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have worked together on a report, which is the result of a co-sponsored workshop of 50 climate and biodiversity experts. The report finds that we can either solve both crises or solve neither.

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New Straits Times

June 16, 2021
Scientists and policymakers recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are interconnected, but in practice they are largely addressed in their own domains.

Followers of the biodiversity loss crisis, therefore, welcomed last week's report on a joint workshop by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Science-Policy Advice on Ecosystems and Biodiversity (IPBES).

Since 1992, when the two issues (along with desertification) became the subject of individual United Nations treaties, biodiversity has never received the same level of global attention accorded to climate. However, neither will be successfully resolved unless they are tackled together and urgently. That was the main takeaway from the report by 50 leading experts jointly chosen by the IPCC and IPBES.

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Mongabay

June 14, 2021
The push to halt climate change too often neglects the interconnected issue of biodiversity loss, according to a recent report from a panel of scientists with the United Nations.

“What we want to emphasize here is how relevant biodiversity conservation is for climate change mitigation,” said Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), in a press conference launching the June 10 report.

In a first-ever collaboration, scientists from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and IPBES teamed up to draw on research looking at the convergence of the biodiversity and climate crises, how they’re affecting all life, including humans, on Earth and what’s being done about them.

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Campaign for Nature

June 10, 2021

A new, peer-reviewed report by 50 climate and biodiversity experts released today asserts that biodiversity loss and climate change are both driven by human economic activities and mutually reinforce each other, and that neither will be successfully resolved unless both are tackled together. 

The report findings echo a recent communiqué by G7 leaders calling for greater and more coordinated climate and biodiversity action. 

Studies have shown that climate change is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and that ecosystems and species play a major function in regulating climate, as carbon sinks, as well as enhancing adaptation and resilience to climate change. 

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Our Daily Planet

October 30, 2020
Yesterday leaders from 190 countries were supposed to have met in Kunming, China for final negotiations on a biodiversity treaty designed to address the world’s urgent extinction and biodiversity crises. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has made attendance of the UN Biodiversity Conference impossible.

However, a panel of experts from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (an independent intergovernmental body open to all member countries of the UN) released a report that links zoonotic diseases like COVID-19 to “unsustainable exploitation of the environment,” including the wildlife trade and land-use change.

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Independent

October 30, 2020
The world must tackle the biodiversity and climate crises to stand a chance of preventing future pandemics, the world's leading experts on nature are warning.

That includes setting up an international body of leaders to minimise risks, the scientists say.

Where there is a clear link to high pandemic risk, taxes on meat consumption and production should be considered, and incentives should be provided to switch away from high-risk industries such as fur farming, they suggest.

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National Geographic

October 29, 2020
Absent major policy changes and billions of dollars invested in protecting land and wildlife, the world may see another major pandemic like COVID-19, an international group of scientists warned today.

Conserving biodiversity can preserve human lives, according to their new report, which reviews the latest research on how the decline of habitat and wildlife leaves humans exposed to new, emerging diseases.

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Campaign For Nature

October 29, 2020

Today, leaders from 190 countries were scheduled to gather in Kunming, China for final negotiations on a biodiversity treaty designed to address the world’s urgent extinction crises. Instead, these leaders are at home, battling the spread of a zoonotic disease that likely emerged from deforestation and the destruction of natural habitats. 

A timely new report by The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) asserts that preventing future pandemics before they emerge requires targeted action to address the underlying causes of pandemics--which  are the same global environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss and climate change.  Among the solutions the report lays out is the conservation of critical areas for biodiversity,  the financing of this protection,  and the design of a green economic recovery from COVID-19--which offers “an insurance against future outbreaks.”

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New Straits Times

October 11, 2020
Several members of the biodiversity community were abuzz last week with news that IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform on Science-Policy Advice on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, was being considered for this year's Nobel Peace Prize (NPP), nominated by a senior German government minister and others.

On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced an extremely deserving winner from within the UN family, the World Food Programme (WFP).

But when one looks at the history of the NPP, I believe there's a very good chance IPBES, which today is just eight years into existence, will be recognised in similar fashion one day.

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The Guardian

December 31, 2019
At the end of a tumultuous decade for biodiversity, in which a report based on the most comprehensive study of life on Earth warned that “nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history”, we spoke to some of the world’s leading voices on the environment about their greatest fears for the next decade – and also their hopes. As the IPBES report’s authors noted: “It is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global.”

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Mongabay

October 17, 2019
A recent U.N. report found that more than 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction. In a conversation with Mongabay, Robert Watson, who chaired the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that produced the report, discusses the economic value of biodiversity.

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Campaign for Nature

May 6, 2019
A new global assessment from the UN-mandated Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was issued today by 150 of the world's leading scientists, painting a grim picture of the state of the planet's lands, ocean, and wildlife. It finds that the loss of nature and the resulting wildlife extinction crisis is worse than previously understood and underscores the urgent need for world leaders to commit to an ambitious global deal to protect nature and, therefore, life on Earth.

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