Diversitas reports:

Delegates agreed that IPBES will be established as an independent intergovernmental body, administered by one or more existing UN organisations. IPBES will respond to requests of government and also welcome suggestions from all relevant stakeholders, such as MEAs, scientific organisations, NGOs and the private sector. IPBES will perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services. These assessments will be scientifically independent and peer-reviewed. IPBES will also support policy formulation and implementation, and place a major emphasis on capacity building needs to improve the science-policy interface.

The official launch will most likely take place during the 65th session of the UN General Assembly (on 20-30 September 2010).

Hopefully, a clear governance structure will be established for the IPBES and the interface between biodiversity science and policy will be strengthened.

Their review of these concepts is relatively broad but difficult to follow. It does not offer a very satisfying conclusion, except a worthwhile attempt to synthesize how these concepts relate to each other in a box-and-arrow diagram.

The more interesting part of their review is their suggestion of 13 important issues to be considered in developing practical goals for conservation. These are the following:

Each one of these issues is discussed in the paper and although they might seem trivial to some, lack of time or expertise often means they are not appropriately accounted for in the design of conservation policies. This situation makes the paper a useful reminder! The authors conclude by listing some key research topics including the challenge of making the enormous mass of ecological knowledge relevant to on-the-ground management of ecosystems and biodiversity. That’s a hard one!

One of the key points discussed in the article is that of setting clear goals for biodiversity: “desired outcomes” that must be set at the catchment or landscape level (or whichever administrative or management unit is appropriate). Establishing such goals would be a requirement for a duty of care policy but would of course be very useful to a whole suite of existing policies (including those based on the evaluation of impacts on biodiversity).

The authors also argue that this desired outcome should probably be based on the maintenance of the ecosystem or landscape level processes that underpin biodiversity (as well as ecosystem services that are important to humans). However, they recognise that many of these are little known or hard to measure and that appropriate indicators might often rest in identifiable biodiversity components (species presence or abundance, habitat acreage…).

The framework conforms with much of the current dialogue concerning biodiversity conservation across landscapes, in seeking to articulate quantifiable and ‘‘biophysically meaningful’’ desired outcomes for biodiversity that incorporate measures of size, configuration and connectivity of habitats, as well as vegetation condition measures that collectively act as surrogates for ecological processes.

This dialogue is very much at the centre of any policy aimed at stopping biodiversity loss or improving its status, be it stewardship, duty of care, offset schemes or top-down command-and-control rules and regulations.

In summary, most glaciers are shrinking and although some may survive and others disappear (particularly in tropical and subtropical regions) the key message is that people who depend on rivers fed by glaciers and snow must already learn to adapt to changes in seasonal water flows.

The IPCC has replied to its critiques. You can read their statement here (pdf)

For a start, the report concludes that ecosystem services conservation is between proof-of-concept and early adoption. Never more. Often less.

It also looks into the challenges facing the concept for it to gain policy-relevance and thus go beyond early adoption. The missing requirements are often the following:

The issue of standardization is often overlooked by ecosystem scientists yet one of the most difficult aims to achieve without reaching outside academia to other actors such as EIA consulting companies, government agencies, businesses or NGOs. Such reaching out requires common goals, which are themselves dependent on strong leadership and advocacy. Who are the individuals and institutions who are taking up this role? Pages 18 to 23 list interesting examples of ecosystem service-based initiatives, both in the public and private sector.

The report lists a set of barriers to the development and implementation of ecosystem service conservation (page 24) as well as risks associated with the spread of the ecosystem service concept:

Shifting of negative impact: The small scale of most ecosystem services efforts can lead to shifting of negative impact behavior to other regions.

Social inequity: Placing a dollar value on something that has been free creates equity concerns and can negatively affect people living in poverty.

Decreased cost-effectiveness: Ecosystem services programs may not be the most cost-effective approaches to conservation.

Diversion of scarce resources: Focusing on the conservation of an ecosystem service could divert resources from known, tested solutions to unknown, experimental approaches (e.g., restoring mangrove forests instead of building storm walls).

Abandonment of established practices: Ecosystem services programs could lead environmental groups to abandon other forms of environmental conservation that have worked in the past.

Lack of biodiversity conservation: Ecosystem services programs do not necessarily lead to biodiversity conservation and may negatively affect full, native biodiversity.

Unknown, unintended consequences: On a large scale, the risk of unintended consequences becomes a significant concern. Ecosystem services projects could lead to unpredicted, unknown, and irreversible outcomes.

This list of potential risks does not mention more general concerns about the “parcelisation” or “commodification” of nature commonly associated with ecosystem service based approaches. The report does however mention that most ecosystem service projects focus on only one or a short selection of ecosystem services rather than on the full suite of services that a given ecosystem provides. Pushing this concern further would show that maintaining fully-functional and/or resilient ecosystems might be a more useful goal than maintaining or enhancing their capacity to provide one or a few services. One or a few services that are deemed important here and now but perhaps not there and then…

The two main points made by the memorandum are that:

Concerning the latter, they cite the TEEB initiative and the EU’s objective of halting biodiversity loss by 2010 (two months left…), and argue that broadening the policy mix to include market-based tools would serve this goal. One of the steps they detail concerns the establishment of markets for conservation-related services in general and of conservation banks in particular. They call these “specialized providers”.

Whoever impedes on the living conditions of plants and animals should have the opportunity to acquire newly developed natural sites from others rather than being obliged to reconstruct them themselves.

Specialised providers will be able to offer newly developed nature and ecological services more cost-effectively and at a higher quality than can the individual originator of ecological damage. Improving nature and establishing biodiversity would thus change from being an annoying obligation to a source of income.

The authors refer to the US mitigation banking as an example of such schemes and mention the fact that although the requirement for compensation of biodiversity impacts exists in German law (Ökokonten and Kompensationsflächenpools translated as “ecological accounts” and “compensatory area pools”), private land owners are not allowed to act as conservation banks.

Anyway, looks like biobanking might just be on its way to Deutschland…

According to the authors, indicators can have three uses: tracking performance (for results-based management), discriminating alternative hypotheses (for scientific exploration), discriminating alternative policies or management options.

In their paper, they focus on the latter. They list ten common mistakes made in developing and using biodiversity indicators aimed at providing guidance to policy makers or forest managers who must decide on landscape or forest management policies and plans. Deciding whether or not to allow a specific project to go forward requires a different suite of indicators than assessing whether or not the project was a success.

They provide a nice example to illustrate their point:

When we go to the doctors and ask “what is my risk of hear disease”, we do not expect the answer to be framed as a percentage of the target daily donut intake”. (…) Eating fewer donuts may be part of a sensible management strategy but it does not answer the question “am I healthy?” A report of two dozen indicators may be an important part of the the analysis process, but it is also not an acceptable answer to the question (…). Doctors it seems understand the need to take a complex thing, break it down into a relatively small number of indicators, and provide a summary judgement about the status of our health or the probability of recovery associated with alternative treatments.

The 10 mistakes:

Among these, TEEB and the CBD’s 2010 targets were well represented. The director general of UNEP, Dr. Steiner, made the opening statement and was active in communicating on the “Blue Carbon” initiative.

Blue carbon? As Pavan Sukhdev, director of TEEB, told the participants in a plenary : all colours of carbon are important: black, brown, green or blue…… from power generation, transport, deforestation and changes in ocean chemistry. But his most insistent words were on the urgency of stopping the rise in sea surface temperatures if we wished to save the world’s coral reefs.

Pavan Sukhdev insists: Coral reefs are especially vulnerable to global warming

The Economist magazine offers a brief synthesis of some of the central take-home messages from the conference. You can access it on their website.