Stakeholders exchange their views and find common ground in preparation of IPBES-1
Under the
chair of Anne Larigauderie of Diversitas International the IPBES-1 stakeholders
today took center stage at the old German Parliament in preparation of the
first plenary session that starts tomorrow. The roughly 150 of us coming from a
diverse group of science organizations such as the IBS, indigenous groups, and
NGOs such as Friends of the Earth, arrived only successively on a day that saw
Frankfurt Airport close down due to ice and snow.
The
stakeholders seemed somewhat biased by science organisations respectively
scientists. Especially the absence of some of the major environmental NGOs was
noticeable. This absence was interpreted by some that these NGOs are sceptical
that the IPBES process will be independent enough and that it does not focus
enough on the biodiversity crisis but rather on the ecosystem service part and
human well being. It will certainly be a great challenge to balance these interests
during the IPBES process.
The goal on
day zero of IPBES-1 was to exchange ideas and to come to common positions for
the up-coming week. In two roundtables the themes “Rules and Procedures”
including the “Role of Observers”, and the IPBES “Initial Work Programme” were
being discussed. We agreed that interest and engagement of all relevant
stakeholders are key for the impact and legitimacy of IPBES. We will therefore
try to convince the plenary to develop a strategy how stakeholders can be
effectively included in the IPBES process. This strategy should get installed
by the second plenary. One interesting suggestion included the setup of
crowdsourcing tools to effectively empower a broad range of people to getting
involved. Many participants stressed the importance to acknowledge the variety
of relevant knowledge that exceeds knowledge provided by the science community.
It will certainly be a major challenge to include the different groups of
knowledge holders in the process and at the same time enable an effective
science driven assessment procedure in this science-policy interface. Besides
stakeholder involvement another point of concern were how the Multidisciplinary
Expert Panel (MEP) will be set together in the future and how the roles of the
MEP and the IPBES Bureau will be interpreted. While nominees for the Interim
MEP (this will serve for 2 years) have already been named (list of nominees can
be seen here: http://www.ipbes.net/plenary/mep-nominations.html ) and will be
elected tomorrow, it is still unclear how the procedure of proposing the
members will be handled in the future. As the MEP is the body that will be
central in guiding the scientific aspects of the IPBES, we will strongly
encourage the plenary to set up rules that allow all stakeholders to
participate in the proposal procedure, and to make this process transparent.
Regarding the roles – we are convinced that it should be the responsibility of
the MEP alone to rank requests for assessment topics as part of its scientific
and technical functions to ensure that this process will be science driven. Finally
we agreed to ask the plenary meeting that the MEP will quickly start the
process of developing an initial work programme during the intersessional phase
so it can be voted on during the 2nd plenary.
Tomorrow
the country delegations of 105 member states of IPBES will move into the spot
light, and after a very long preparatory process IPBES-1 will officially begin.
—Lars Opgenoorth
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