Biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides are being depleted at unprecedented rates. Modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and established in 2012, the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) works to bridge the gap between science and policy on the topics of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The Ecosystems and Resilience Theme of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) coordinated the engagement of more than a dozen scientists from multiple partner institutions with the IPBES. As part of this, WLE was assigned to work on a number of studies in preparation for the forthcoming Global Assessment.

These studies will touch on some important topics that are central to WLE’s work, including an analysis of changes in agricultural ecosystems and the water-food-energy nexus. Doing this explicitly creates the critically important but often underemphasized connection that agriculture is part of ecosystems, not separate from it. As such, agriculture and agro-ecosystems have great potential to positively influence human well-being through the delivery of beneficial ecosystem services.

 “The nominations of WLE scientists in IPBES underscore the strength of the program’s ecosystem services-based research and the integral role of agriculture as a provider and beneficiary of ecosystem services”, says Fabrice DeClerck of Bioversity, co-leader of WLE’s Ecosystem Services and Resilience research theme.  “IPBES provides an important opportunity for our scientists to both share and learn from these global assessments, while strengthening connections with existing national partners from our regional programs.”

WLE scientists also contributed to the scoping document on the Sustainable Use of Biodiversity, which was finalized in August of 2016.