Next week, negotiations will begin for the 11th IPBES Plenary Meeting in Windhoek, Namibia—the most significant IPBES conference since the Global Biodiversity Report was adopted in Paris in 2019.
The plenary conference is particularly significant because two major global reports will be presented to representatives of approximately 150 governments in Windhoek, Namibia, and both are expected to have a lasting impact well into the future as a basis for a better understanding of the green transition. The reports were commissioned by the individual countries’ governments, which will also be present in Namibia to approve them.
These are draft reports on the barriers and opportunities for bringing about fundamental, systemic—so-called transformative—changes, which are to be presented and discussed alongside a report on the interconnections and trade-offs between biodiversity, food, health, water, and climate. Both draft reports have been classified as confidential ahead of negotiations in Namibia, where officials from IPBES member countries can ask questions about the findings and propose changes. It is up to the experts to reject or accept requests and proposals for changes, depending entirely on whether they are supported by research-based knowledge or other relevant expertise.
Transformative Change
The report on transformative change was created first and foremost to address the root causes of the biodiversity crisis, which have so far proven impossible to tackle. For decades, the primary focus has been on the direct threats posed by agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, as well as on ensuring effective protected areas and reversing the population decline of threatened species.
It remains crucial, and there is still a very long way to go. However, the report on transformative change takes an even broader view of the major underlying human factors driving these declines and the extinction of genes, populations, species, and ecosystems across the globe. These factors include, among others, demographic and sociocultural factors, economic growth, technological development, poor governance, and ineffective institutions.
The report’s findings are expected to challenge the existing social model and bring us much closer to an understanding of the systemic changes across values, structures, and sectors 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, among other things, equality and justice, pluralism and inclusion, a new perspective on humanity’s view of nature, and ongoing learning, understanding, and adjustments to the transition. The latter is important, in part, because no one knows for certain what the path forward will look like. In other words, there are many changes and initiatives that must work together, and not all of the outcomes can be fully anticipated in advance.
It may sound abstract, but it is nonetheless what the entire research community within IPBES asserts is necessary to bring about the change that has eluded us for the past 30-plus years, despite growing 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 connection between nature and other Sustainable Development Goals, such as health, water, food, and climate. These are also themes of the well-known Sustainable Development Goals, which are aimed at being achieved by 2030. Numerous researchers and experts have been brought together here to address our understanding of these interconnections and, consequently, the important trade-offs that will arise as we work to reverse both the biodiversity and climate crises, while simultaneously ensuring stable supplies of food and water and safeguarding the foundation for human health.
The draft report provides an overview of developments in—and the connections between—biodiversity and each of the four themes. There will be a strong focus on balances, because options for action and solutions within one theme influence one another. For this reason, the report also examines a range of different scenarios leading up to 2050, which combine developments within the individual areas to collectively provide an overall picture of the future. A total of three chapters at the end of the report are dedicated to outlining options for action, directions, and scenarios.
The overarching approach, therefore, is that solutions to a particular theme (the Sustainable Development Goals) cannot be viewed in isolation but must be considered in conjunction with the others. In many cases, solutions will address only one or a few of the goals, but at the expense of the others. It is crucial to highlight and understand such trade-offs between critical and important goals.
New Global IPBES Report
In addition to the two major landmark reports, which are to be discussed and submitted for approval by the member states, the member states must also agree on the content of a new global report expected to be published in 2028. Among other things, this report will provide an update on the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Targets (GBF) under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Agreement, as well as another objective assessment of the state of biodiversity since the last report. The report will assess biodiversity trends up to 2025, focusing on the last 50 years, but will also look back to the period 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 these agreements have triggered. In addition, the report will build upon the eight IPBES reports published since the first global report in 2019.
There will also be a focus on financing and how barriers to achieving the GBF goals can be addressed. The policy options will take a long-term perspective extending all the way to 2100, but with a focus on 2030 and 2050 in relation to the overarching UN goals of reversing the biodiversity crisis.
Finally, a fourth and final important point will be a discussion of how the extensive work being done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)—analyzing, respectively, the progression of and solutions to the biodiversity and climate crises—can be more closely integrated.
In practice, this could mean increased engagement and participation by climate experts from the IPCC in IPBES biodiversity conferences—and vice versa—as well as collaboration on developing joint outputs that integrate goals and solutions for the two global crises. Here, too, there will be trade-offs and joint solutions. Among the proposals submitted by IPBES member countries is a proposal for a joint report on climate and biodiversity that examines interconnections and synergies. Nature-based solutions, among other things, will be a key concept in this integrated approach.
The Danish delegation in Namibia consists of Katrine Nissen, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Tripartite Cooperation, who serves as head of the delegation and is a member of IPBES’s steering group in Denmark; Michael Grell from the new ministry; and Lars Dinesen, IPBES coordinator in Denmark.
IPBES in Denmark is organizing two important symposia in the wake of the reports. The first will take place on January 28 at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with the KU Green Solutions Center under the title “How Do We Address the Biodiversity Crisis Together,” while the second symposium will take place on February 19, 2025, at Copenhagen Business School, featuring authors from the global report who will focus on how to bring about transformative change.
