Next week, negotiations for the 11th IPBES Plenary Conference will begin in Windhoek, Namibia – the most pivotal IPBES conference since the Global Biodiversity Report was adopted in Paris in 2019.
The special significance of the Plenary Conference is due to the fact that there are two major global reports being presented to representatives of approximately 150 governments in Windhoek, Namibia, both of which are predicted to have an impact far into the future as a basis for a better understanding of the green transition. The reports have been commissioned by the governments of each country, who will also be present in Namibia to approve them.
The report drafts on barriers and opportunities for creating fundamental, systemic, so-called transformative change will be presented and considered, along with a report on the linkages and trade-offs between biodiversity, food, health, water and climate. Both draft reports are marked as confidential ahead of the negotiations in Namibia, where officials from the IPBES member countries can inquire about the findings and propose changes. It’s up to the experts to reject or accept requests and suggestions for change depending on whether it is supported by research-based knowledge or other crucial expertise.
Transformative change
The Transformative Change report is primarily designed to address the underlying causes of the biodiversity crisis that have so far proved impossible to tackle.. For decades, the primary focus has been on the direct threats from agriculture, forestry and fisheries, as well as securing effective protected areas and reversing the decline of endangered species.
This is still crucial, and there is still a very long way to go. But the Transformative Change report takes an even broader view of the major underlying human factors driving these declines and extinctions of genes, populations, species and ecosystems across the globe. These factors include demographic and socio-cultural factors, economic growth, technological development, poor governance and ineffective institutions.
The content of the report is expected to challenge the existing societal model and move much closer to an understanding of the systemic changes across values, structures, and sectors that have been proposed by IPBES as a solution to the biodiversity crisis.
During a previous symposium on transformative change organized by IPBES in Denmark and the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management (IGN) at the University of Copenhagen under the auspices of the Ecosystem Services Network, principles for change were discussed. These included equality and justice, pluralism and inclusion, a new perspective on humanity’s view of nature and continuous learning and understanding and adjustments to the transition. The latter partly because no one knows the way forward with certainty. In other words, there are many changes and initiatives that need to work together, and the results are not all predictable.
This may sound abstract, but it is nonetheless what a united research community in IPBES argues is necessary to create the change that has not been successful over the past 30+ years despite increasing global consensus that the biodiversity crisis must and should be reversed.
Food, water, health and climate
The second major report presented by the experts focuses on the link between nature and four other sustainability themes: health, water, food and climate. These are also themes within the already known SDGs that aim to be achieved by 2030. The many researchers and experts have been brought together here to address understanding of the connections and thus also the important trade-offs that will be made when both the biodiversity and climate crises must be stopped, and at the same time there must be stable supplies of food and water while also ensuring the basis for human health.
The report draft provides an overview of development in, and links between, biodiversity and each of the four themes. There will be a strong focus on balances because actions and solutions within one theme affect the others. Therefore, the report also looks at a number of different scenarios up to 2050, combining developments in the individual areas that together provide an overall picture of the future. Three chapters at the end of the report are dedicated to setting out options, directions and scenarios.
The overall approach is that solutions to one theme (SDG) cannot be viewed in isolation, but must be considered in relation to the others. In many cases, solutions may only benefit one or a few of the goals, but at the expense of others. Such trade-offs between crucial and important goals are essential to highlight and understand.
New global IPBES assessment
In addition to the two major landmark reports to be discussed and submitted for national acceptance, the member states of IPBES will decide on the content of a new global report expected to be published in 2028. This report will provide a status on the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Targets (GBF) under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Agreement, as well as an assessment of the status of biodiversity since the last status report. The report will assess biodiversity trends up to 2025, focusing on the last 50 years, while also considering historical perspectives dating back to before the industrial revolution.
As with the first global IPBES report, and as mentioned in other IPBES reports, the focus will be on identifying options for action. This will involve examining the goals of the various global agreements and the implementation responses that the agreements have triggered. In addition, the report will build on the eight IPBES assessments that have been published since the first global report in 2019.
There will also be a focus on financing and how barriers related to the GBF goals can be addressed. The options for action will consider a long-term perspective extending all the way to 2100, but with a particular emphasis on 2030 and 2050 in relation to the overall UN goals of reversing the biodiversity crisis.
Finally. a fourth and final key point will be a discussion of how the extensive work carried out by the climate panel IPCC climate panel and the biodiversity platform IPBES – analyzing the development of and solution to the biodiversity and climate crises – can be brought closer together.
In practice, this could mean increased engagement and participation of climate experts from the IPCC in biodiversity conferences under IPBES, and vice versa, as well as collaboration on the development of joint products that integrate goals and solutions for the two global crises. Here too, trade-offs and shared solutions will be central. Among the proposals submitted by IPBES member countries is the idea of a joint report on climate and biodiversity, exploring interlinkages and synergies. Nature-based solutions will be a key concept in this integrated approach.
The Danish delegation in Namibia consists of Deputy Director at the Ministry of Green Transition, Katrine Nissen, who is the delegation leader and a member of the IPBES steering group in Denmark, Michael Grell who is also from the Ministry, and Lars Dinesen, the coordinator for IPBES in Denmark.
IPBES in Denmark is organizing two important symposia following the reports. The first will take place on January 28 at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with the KU Green Solutions Centre, under the title “How Do We Address the Biodiversity Crisis Together.” The second symposium will be held on February 19, 2025, at Copenhagen Business School, with authors of the global report, with a focus on how to create transformative changes.
