October 2017: The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has launched a series of primers. The short briefing documents contain key information about the five landmark assessments set for launch at the sixth annual session of the IPBES Plenary, to be held in March 2018, in Medellín, Colombia.

The assessments will evaluate lessons learned and progress (or lack thereof) on the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the implications for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as other global environmental agreements. They include four regional assessments focusing on the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Europe and Central Asia – the whole world except Antarctica and the oceans. There will also be a global report on land degradation and restoration.

Three years in development, the four IPBES regional assessment reports have involved over 550 experts from more than 100 countries.

Three years in development, at a total cost of about US$5 million, the four IPBES regional assessment reports have involved over 550 experts from more than 100 countries. The experts have reviewed both scientific papers and other information sources, including indigenous and local knowledge sources. The reports will evaluate the status of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to a good quality of life in each region. They will describe current status and trends, as well as their links to drivers of change and threats, and identify policy-relevant issues affecting them. The analyses will project likely future interactions between people and nature, based on different decision pathways.

Each regional assessment report will address:

• How biodiversity, ecosystem functions and nature’s contributions to people affect economies, livelihoods, food security and good quality of life;
• The status, trends and potential future dynamics of biodiversity, ecosystem functions and nature’s contributions to people, which affect their contributions to economies, livelihoods and human well-being;
• The pressures driving changes in biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people;
• The actual and potential impacts of policies and actions on the contributions of nature to sustainable economies, livelihoods, food security and good quality of life; and
• Priority gaps in knowledge.

The assessment on land degradation and restoration will identify threats to land-based ecosystems, offering evidence from around the world and a range of best-available solutions to reduce the environmental, social and economic risks and impacts of land degradation. It will provide decision-makers with more information on how to halt and reverse land degradation, especially in light of the SDGs, within which there are specific goals on stopping land degradation (SDG 15.3), and decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation (SDG 8.4), as well as others for which addressing land degradation is relevant. [IPBES-6 Primers]