Comments

Comments provided here should be regarded as representing preliminary views of the European Commission and are not prejudging the position of the European Union for the ad-hoc intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder meeting on an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), scheduled for 10-12 November 2008, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Strengthening the science-policy interface of international biodiversity politics is of utmost importance. We therefore strongly support the setting up of an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The core mandate of IPBES, should be the provision of authoritative, independent, credible, inclusive and internationally peer-reviewed policy-relevant scientific advice on global biodiversity issues, regular policy relevant advice on emerging issues as well as periodic assessments on the state of global biodiversity and related socio-economic implications.

The mandate and institutional set-up of IPBES must avoid duplicating the work of existing international institutions (such as the CBD and its SBSTTA) and processes (such as already established scientific networks). The scientific platform established by IPBES should constitute a 'network of networks' in which existing scientific networks would play an important role. IPBES should support the work of international conventions - in particular the CBD and its SBSTTA - have a cost-effective and efficient governance structure embedded in an IGO such as UNEP, ensure a broad range of scientific expertise (ecological, economical and social, north and south, 'hard science' and traditional knowledge,….) and equitable geographic representation.

The draft concept note, particularly its reflections on the mandate and governance structure of IPBES should be streamlined and clarified. In addition, it seems important to provide at least an indication of the expected costs for Phase I.

Mandate and Scope: The key functions of the IPBES are to provide authoritative, independent, credible, inclusive and internationally peer-reviewed policy-relevant scientific advice on global biodiversity issues, regular policy relevant advice on emerging issues as well as periodic assessments on the state of global biodiversity and related socio-economic implications. IPBES should also identify research needs and seek political recognition of these needs, provide scientific consensus on particular issues and contribute to knowledge generation through regular scientific assessments on biodiversity and ecosystem services and through facilitating the generation, compilation and summary of the existing knowledge tapping into existing knowledge networks. These are essentially scientific and coordination tasks.

The concept note should therefore focus on generating knowledge through Sub-Global Assessments and other means and avoid duplication of ongoing political processes such as the CBD. Other envisioned roles such as the development of policy guidance and capacity-building are already major tasks of existing organisations and bodies. The results of IPBES will help advancing these tasks in the relevant fora. However, they should not constitute part of the core mandate of IPBES.

Governance structure: The IPBES should have access to a wide range of expertise at different geographical levels. This would require the capacity to activate and add value to the diverse institutions and programmes already working around the globe in a flexible way. Instead of developing an additional governance layer, as proposed in the Concept note, IPBES should promote and support existing regional platforms and networks that it will depend on for obtaining the greater part of relevant information, and that should be perceived in the concept note as multipliers and regionally sensitive interfaces between science and policy. At present, the concept note does not provide any sense of the intense and widespread activity already going on across the globe in biodiversity and ecosystems science, or in the many and varied science-policy interfaces that have been functioning for years, sometimes decades.

The detailed roles and responsibilities of the suggested governance structure of IPBES, particularly the suggested constitution of and relationship between Plenary Assembly, Operational Steering Group and Scientific Group seems confusing. We propose a radical streamlining of the IPBES management process: Only one Steering group with a mainly scientific focus should be supported by a small secretariat. Governments should be represented in the Plenary Assembly. The main roles of the Plenary Assembly roles would be to approve reports prepared by the Steering Group, to set the programme of work, etc. In the Plenary Assembly, non-governmental organisations, MEAs Secretariats and other stakeholders would only have an observer status. The chairs of the Scientific bodies of biodiversity-related MEAs should be represented in the Steering group.

Awareness: An important role of IPBES would be to help increase awareness among a wide range of audiences, including ordinary people, business leaders and policy makers, of the nature of the problems facing us. To achieve this, the IPBES would have to assess and achieve a consensus opinion developed by scientists and politically approved by governments on the status and trends of a particular phenomenon that might be of importance to biodiversity or ecosystem changes. As part of its mandate, IPBES would also have to achieve a consensus on the causes of the changes, the implications of the changes to society and to the environment, and on options available for action (including scenarios). To contribute to awareness raising, IPBES should have access to the services of people with good skills in public relations and a proportion of its funding should be dedicated to communication, and a communication strategy should be developed and maintained.

Finance: The concept note does not touch on the issue of finance. The question of resources must be dealt with, and sooner rather than later. Governments will not commit to the process in Kuala Lumpur if they do not know the financial implications of this commitment and if they do not have confidence that a cost-effective mechanism is created. Clarification is needed of what exactly IPBES is expected to do, by whom and who is going to pay for them to do it.

Objective of the Kuala Lumpur Meeting: An effective IPBES needs a clear mandate and institutional framework. So far, governments attending the CBD COP9 have given UNEP a mandate to have a meeting. According to the concept note this meeting is expected to "approve" the phasing of activities in Phase I and the objectives of IPBES (p. 6, line 5 ff), to "agree on the modalities, objectives, scope, principles and procedures of Phase I" (p. 9, line 9f), to establish the proposed institutional structure of IPBES (p. 14, line 37 ff) with a dedicated budget (p.15, line 10f) as well as setting up a separate trust fund (p. 11, line 18). We suggest I that the concept note pulls together relevant language on the objective of the Kuala Lumpur meeting into one section. If the initial meeting is to decide on a mandate and the financing of IPBES, participants must have the authority to speak for their governments or institutions. It remains unclear if the "agreement" to be achieved at the intergovernmental meeting refers to an informal political agreement or a formal agreement that will be signed, creating obligations for participating governments. This must be clarified as soon as possible. Provision should also be included for input into the discussion from organisations and countries that cannot, for one reason or another, participate in Kuala Lumpur. If the initial meeting is to decide on a mandate and the financing of IPBES, participants must have the authority to speak for their governments or institutions. It remains unclear if the "agreement" to be achieved at the intergovernmental meeting refers to an informal political agreement or a formal agreement that will be signed, creating obligations for participating governments. This must be clarified as soon as possible. Provision should also be included for input into the discussion from organisations and countries that cannot, for one reason or another, participate in Kuala Lumpur.

Influencing the research agenda: The concept note identifies the need to characterise the knowledge gaps that hinder the creation or application of policy, or that make it difficult to manage ecosystems effectively. It is not clear who, at a global scale, is the probable client of this service, what kinds of knowledge gaps might the IPBES seek to identify and who would be expected to fund the research needed to fill these knowledge gaps.

Delete reference to setting up of biodiversity related targets beyond 2010. IPBES can support setting the targets by generating the necessary scientific basis, but the target setting itself is the role of Governments, e.g. in the CBD.

Generating the Knowledge through Sub-Global assessments: The IPBES has the ambition to undertake periodic sub-global scale assessments of the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The methods by which these assessments are undertaken are not yet determined, but if they are similar to the work done under the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, they will depend on earlier work carried out at more detailed geographic scales. Thus local assessments will be aggregated to regional ones, and regional ones to sub-global ones. Finally, trends detected in sub-global assessments can be used to make claims about the state of global biodiversity and ecosystem services. Local assessments, therefore, are essential for the method to work. Thus the methods and objectives of local assessments are likely to be set locally, by the authority responsible, and to be appropriate to local needs. Given the wide range of possible reasons for carrying out local assessments, it is crucial that the IPBES establishes standard sets of methods and objectives for local assessments in order to ensure that local assessments are compatible with one another, and that it will be possible to scale up the findings in a useful way.

Policy support: The IPBES is justified on the grounds that current interfaces between science and policy do not work effectively at a global scale. Thus the essence of the IPBES is to supply authoritative scientific information and related policy options, based on scientific consensus, for consideration by the global community. IPBES will not have the capacity to provide an assessment of the consequences of the choice of one or other policy option, including economic impacts, at national level. In drafting the mandate of IPBES as regards policy-support, care must be taken not to duplicate the tasks of existing international bodies, most prominently the SBSTTA to the CBD. IPBES should contribute to policy discussions and decisions taken in these bodies by generating scientifically agreed input. However, IPBES itself should not provide policy recommendations or guidance but rather analyze and describe (also using scenarios-building) possible consequences of several options.

Horizon scanning: This is a very important task. Here, the body would be responsible for identifying issues that are not yet critical but are likely to become so. One apparent difficulty, however, is that it is unlikely that a scientific consensus exists when the horizon scanning begins, since if it did, the issue would probably not be an emerging one, but instead, one quite well studied. Similarly, it is unlikely that much existing knowledge could be used to establish a new scientific consensus. Instead, the mechanism would probably have to generate at least some new knowledge on the issue.

Capacity building: The concept note sets out a potentially far-reaching statement of intent concerning capacity building: the IPBES will "contribute to efforts for undertaking Sub-Global Assessments" (p.8, line 23), it will build capacity for "integrating the monetary and non-monetary values of biodiversity and ecosystem services into national accounts“ (p.8, line 23/ 24), it will set up a programme awarding fellowships to young scientists from developing countries (p.8, line 32 f), and provide targeted support to specific national and international agencies involved in scientific assessments of the biosphere. Apart from the fellowship programme, it remains unclear which type of support is envisioned. It is also unclear at this point, whether IPBES will have the financial support to undertake capacity-building activities. No cost estimates are provided. As already stated above, the role of IPBES in capacity-building must be defined more clearly and carefully, also to avoid creating unrealistic expectations.

Key operating principles for Phase I: IPBES should be responsive to policy needs as identified by decision-making organs at multiple scales, including biodiversity-related MEAs. The principles and procedures in Annex I do not make reference to decisions taken by these organs and how these should be reflected in setting the IPBES work programme.

Operational Steering Group: We suggest deleting reference to the OSG in the concept note. Its suggested role is overlapping with that of the Plenary Assembly (approval of budget, work programme, chair, overseeing implementation of Phase-I activities). Insofar as there are organizational tasks needed in implementing the work-programme agreed by the Plenary Assembly, these can be fulfilled by the Scientific Steering Group supported by the Secretariat. .