Report of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on the work of its seventh session

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has released its first global assessment of biodiversity, its contributions to humanity and scenarios for its conservation. This report has left us with big headlines in the media and has put biodiversity in the center of the public agenda. However, far from the big headlines of the moment, the science community have been rising the alarms since long time ago. The report covers the decline in biodiversity and ecosystem services, the drivers of this change, the failure to meet many conservation goals and the transformative change needed to rise to the challenge. IPBES report has generated a lot of headlines but, what else is on it?

The most shocking headline that IPBES report has left is that 1 million species are at risk of extinction. This number comes from the knowledge of experts that have calculated that 25% of the species evaluated in the IUCN Red List are at risk of extinction. However is also important to continue the sentence, the report also said that this risk is imminent, many of these species face extinction in the next 10 years, if we don’t do something about it. Moreover, without action, the rates of biodiversity loss will incense 10 to 100 times the background levels.

Another conclusion that is clear from this report is that the causes of the decline on biodiversity are human activities. Changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasion of alien species, are the main drivers that are threatening biodiversity. At the same time, these threads are also threatening humans well being. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystem are vital contributions for human existent. This contribution takes a lot of forms form ecosystem goods and services to naturals gifts.

The most encouraging part of the report is that we still have time to reverse these dramatic trends, but we have to start working right now, it is an urgent matter. We have to put biodiversity at the top of the global agenda. This will require changes in western economic and social systems and changes in our patterns of production and consumption. It will require the sustainable production of food and other resources, alongside a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Society needs to shift from an economic growth perspective to a nature-based one. The report also confirms that nature managed by indigenous people and local communities are in better health than other managements systems. Therefore, to conserve natural ecosytems, governments need to learn from these communities, implementing their knowledge of nature into future policies.

This report is based on 15,000 scientific articles and government reports, integrating information from natural and social sciences, indigenous peoples and traditional agricultural communities. From the Global Mammal Assessment, we contribute to scientific biodiversity knowledge. As members of the IUCN Red List Partnership we are dedicated to the assessment of mammal extinction risk. Moreover we work in the development of species distribution models, the forecast of scenarios of future native and introduced species, risk of extinction due to climate change, and SDGs. Carlo Rondinini, coordinator of the Global Mammal Assessment, was one of the experts invited to write the IPBES report.

On 13^th of May, the Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy(TNC), Prof. Hugh Possingham gave a talk on “Novel Conservation science and economics that drives outcomes for The Nature Conservancy” at the Department of Biology and Biotechnologies in Sapienza University of Rome. Prof. Possingham kicked off the session by introducing TNC. He then highlighted the role of mathematics, economics and decision science in conservation. The students also got to know about the famous decision science software Marxan from the inventor himself. The talk then progressed towards some of the projects implemented by TNC. “Debt for nature swaps” was one of the fascinating projects implemented by TNC where a country’s debt was paid by TNC in exchange for commitments to protect nature. In another project called “Reverse Auction”, the farmers were actually given money to leave water in their farms during the winter for the birds. He also talked about the projects which harnessed the potential of geospatial and decision science tools for protecting nature. Development of conservation plan in Mongolia using Marxan, action maps for pollution were some of the examples of such projects. The talk was followed by a short and lively question/answer session.

In the Greek island of Rhodes, the oldest inhabited medieval town in Europe, and a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, we put ourselves into work. Our objective was to experience a real life scenario in the selection of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA). We went trough theoretical and practical exercises to identify sites in Greece contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity. With the input from external scientists specialized in different taxonomic groups and KBA experts, we followed the Global Standard for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas. This document highlights a resulting effort of more than 30 years in identifying important sites for different taxonomic, ecological and thematic subsets of biodiversity.

The process started with a scoping analysis to compile a list of species in Greece that could trigger the species-based criteria for potential KBAs. Quality data of the species and region of interest are necessary to verify that the proposed species comply with the relevant thresholds. KBA identification and delineation is done by overlaying spatial data of the species with existing conservation sites (e.g. Protected areas) or management units.

After official submission of a proposed area, the KBA secretariat coordinates the process to confirm species’ presence at the site, refine delineation to yield manageable boundaries, and if the threshold is met, finally confirm the site as a new KBA.

Carlo Rondinini gave a public talk (in Italian) on SDG 15 “Life on Land” at Teatro Grande in Brescia, near Milan, on January 21. The talk was introduced by Prof. Roberta Pedrazzani and is part of a series of talks organized by the University of Brescia.

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Moreno Di Marco won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship with the project PROTECTNICHE. The project, presented by the researcher of the Department of Biology and Biotechnology at Sapienza Università di Roma in collaboration with Dr Carlo Rondinini, aims at disentangling the impacts of humans, climate change, and life history on the climatic niches of terrestrial mammals. The goal is to inform a conservation strategy for preventing future species declines. The extinction of species is the most alarming consequence of global biodiversity decline, with potential dramatic effects on our economy and well-being. The current rate of climate change is predicted to further increase extinction risk, hence there is urgent need to anticipate species decline rather than reacting to it. The breadth of a species’ niche – the set of environmental conditions in which the species can persist – is the key ecological trait that allows adaptation to environmental change, but is often ignored in conservation planning applications. This is a research area of primary interest in Europe, given the European Commission has recognised that business opportunities from investing in biodiversity conservation could be worth US$ 2-6 trillion by 2050 (source Sapienza)

We are delighted to welcome 4 very bright young researchers as PhD fellows!

They are all part of the Innovative Training Network (ITN-ETN) project, Inspire4 Nature, funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions.

Prabhat Raj Dahal – Project “Advancing quantitative analyses for IUCN Red List assessments of species’ risk of extinction”

Ivon Cuadros Casanova Project “How will halting biodiversity loss affect the achievement of other Sustainable Development Goals?”

Maria Lumbierres Project “Where will further Key Biodiversity Areas be identified? A modelling approach to focus efforts”

Carmen Soria Project “Projected effect of global change on species’ change in extinction risk”