10 December 2014: The Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has prepared a “short note” on how it ensures credibility, relevance, legitimacy and transparency through its rules of procedure and the processes approved by its Plenary.

According to the operating principles of the Platform, IPBES must be scientifically independent and ensure credibility, relevance and legitimacy through peer review of its work and transparency in its decision-making processes. The IPBES assessments can be strong as long as relevant experts are involved in the preparation and peer-review processes, which will offer safeguards to ensure that biases and conflicts of interest are avoided, indicates the note.

The Plenary of IPBES has also adopted ‘Procedures for the preparation of the Platform’s deliverables,’ which set forth that experts are nominated by both governments and stakeholders and are selected by the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel (MEP) of IPBES.

The principles also provide guidance on mechanisms to safeguard against any risks of bias. Finally, the fourth Plenary of IPBES is expected to approve, in January 2015, a Conflict of Interest (CoI) policy based on an initial discussion that was conducted at the Plenary’s third meeting in December 2013. In the meantime, an interim CoI policy has been agreed by the Bureau and is already being applied to all experts. [Publication: Set of principles and procedures guiding the work of IPBES] [IPBES website]