[THS] New UN science body to monitor biosphere

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

Published online 12 June 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.297

New UN science body to monitor biosphere

'IPCC for biodiversity' approved after long negotiation

Emma Marris

All creatures great and small: A newly approved global science organization to
oversee life on earth will have its work cut out for it.Cesar Paes Barreto

Representatives from close to 90 countries gathering in Busan, Korea, this week,
have approved the formation of a new organization to monitor the ecological state of
the planet and its natural resources. Dubbed the Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the new entity will likely
meet for the first time in 2011 and operate much like the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).

In essence, that means the IPBES will specialize in "peer review of peer review", says
Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme, which has
so far hosted the IPBES birth process. Its organizers hope that its reports and
statements will be accepted as authoritative and unbiased summaries of the state of
the science. Like the IPCC, it will not recommend particular courses of action. "We will
not and must not be policy prescriptive", emphasized Robert Watson, chief scientific
advisor to the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a vice-
chair of the Busan meeting. "That is critical, or it will kill the process."

According to the document approved June 11, IPBES will conduct periodic
assessments of the diversity of life on earth and its 'ecosystem services'—those
outputs of ecosystems, such as clean fresh water, fish, game, timber and a stable
climate, that benefit humankind. These assessments will answer questions about how
much biodiversity is declining and what the implications of extinctions and ecosystem
change are for humanity. Assessments will take place on global, regional and sub-
regional scales.

IPBES will also take a hand in training environmental scientists in the developing
world, both with a to-be-determined budget of its own and by alerting funders about
gaps in global expertise. The organization will also identify research that needs to be
done and useful tools—such as models—for policymakers looking to apply a scientific
approach to such decisions as land management.

In Busan, negotiations stretched late into the night as delegates debated the scope
of the proposed IPBES, including the specifics of how it will be funded. "There was
concern among the developed countries that this not become a huge bureaucracy,"
says Nuttall. "Governments wanted to be reassured that it would be lean and mean
and streamlined."

Another bone of contention was to what extent IPBES would tackle emerging issues
or areas of contested science. In the end, it was agreed that the body will draw
attention to "new topics" in biodiversity and ecosystem science. "If there had been
something like this before, then new results on issues such as ocean acidification,
dead zones in the ocean and the biodiversity impacts of biofuels would have been
rushed to the inboxes of policymakers, instead of coming to their attention by
osmosis," says Nuttall.

Among the governments who assented to the IPBES's creation were the European
Union, the United States, and Brazil. The plan will come before the general assembly
of the United Nations, slated to meet in September, for official approval. Those
involved with the process say that that the UN creation of the new body is a virtual
certainty.

Structural integrity

Anne Larigauderie, executive director of the Paris-based biodiversity science clearing
house Diversitas, was jubilant at the outcome but said that the final agreement
included a few disappointments. She hoped that IPBES would be set up to take
requests for information or reports not only from governments and biodiversity-
related conventions, such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, but also from
environmental organizations, academic societies and economic interests such as
agricultural and trade organizations. Instead, all requests to IPBES will go through its
voting members—all of them government representatives.

Larigauderie suggests that this organizational structure represents an effort by
governments to control potentially embarrassing information. "We were struck with
the fear in governments," she says. "To them, scientific information represents a
potential threat."

Hugh Possingham, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Queensland,
Australia, specializes in decision-making tools for use by governments and
conservation organizations. He says IPBES will have to make predictions to be useful.
"Until we can make forward projections of meaningful biodiversity metrics under
different policy scenarios, biodiversity is not even at the policy table," he says.

Watson says that IPBES will indeed make predictions, as its charge is to conduct
"comprehensive" assessments.

Larigauderie say that IPBES has the potential to turn the "fragmented" field of
biodiversity research into a more coordinated "common enterprise" that will lead to
better predictive models of future biodiversity changes.

Source: Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100612/full/news.2010.297.html