Presentació d'Unai Pascual al #IPBESCat Debat sobre el darrer informe d’avaluació global del IPBES: Ens estem quedant sols

1. www.ipbes.net
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Unai Pascual
Ikerbasque, Basque Centre for Climate Change & Univ. Bern
Lead Author of the IPBES Global Assessment , Member of
the Management Committee of the Global Assessment & co-
Chair of the IPBES Values Assessment
21 June 2019, Barcelona
Els serveis ambientals dels ecosistemes: quin pes
tenen en el context socioeconòmic?

2. The IPBES Global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem
services
A major undertaking:
 6 chapters (1,800 pages)
 1 summary for policymakers
 15,000 publications
 20,000 comments received: in-
depth peer review
Part of an important sequence toward 2020:
 G7 Environment (4-6 May, Metz, France)
 Scientific basis for the post 2020 biodiversity
framework (COP 15, Nov. 2020)
An unprecedented global interest in biodiversity:
 24,000 press articles
 150 countries, 45 languages

3. The Author Team
145 experts:
3 co-chairs
24 coordinating lead
authors
87 lead authors
15 review editors
16 fellows
350 contributing authors
From 51 countries
58%
Natural
Scientists
9%
interdisciplinary
Scientists
33% Social
Scientists
37.2%
Women
62.8% Men
~156,000 Hours of Voluntary
Hours = ~17 years

4. Life on Earth is
deteriorating fast
worldwide.
Virtually all indicators
of the global state of
nature are decreasing:
biomes, ecosystems, species, varieties
and breeds

5. Nature is being degraded at a rate and scale
unprecedented in human history
 75% of the land surface is significantly altered by human
actions
 >85% of wetlands have been lost
 Only 13% of oceans can still be viewed as wilderness

6. Nature’s contributions to people are deteriorating worldwide

7. Projected changes in biodiversity and nature’s material & regulating
contributions, due to climate & land use change
by 2050

8. DIRECT DRIVERS
Terrestrial
Freshwater
Marine
S
O
CI
A
L
V
A
L
U
E
S
Population 3.7  7.6 billion people
Global GDP x4, agricultural production
value x3, international trade x10
Drivers since 1970

9. Some possible actions are politically palatable
 Produce and consume food sustainably
• Reduce food waste
• Promote sustainable and healthy diets
• Promote biodiversity friendly management practices (e.g. agroecology)
 Build sustainable cities
• Limit urban sprawl
• Promote low impact public transportation, nature sensitive road networks
• Expand vegetation cover, promote urban gardens
• Manage for ecological connectivity
• Promote sustainable water and solid waste management
Some general principles are discursively accepted
 Promote interconnections between sectoral policies (e.g. agriculture,
fisheries, tourism, energy, etc.) – policy mainstreaming
 Enable participation of a large diversity of actors (e.g. local communities)

10. Food production and conservation goals:
complementary and interdependent.
Sustainable fisheries: integrated management
on land, in freshwater and oceans
Land-based climate change mitigation:
attention to trade-offs
Nature-based solutions in cities:
crucial for global sustainability
The 4 most urgent challenges to be addressed
Food (Agr&Fisheries), CC mitigation & Urbanization

11. Need for rapid implementation of existing
instruments and bold decisions for transformative
change.
Knowledge and tools available
…
But generally implementation is
lacking
too slow or timid

12. the elephant in the room
1. Urgency clashes with vested interests to
protect the dominant economic development
paradigm based on material and energy
intensive growth-mania
2. Insufficient attention to the developmental
role of abiotic resources

13. World mining production 1984-2014 (in Million metr. t)

17. Fossil fuel subsidies > x2 subsidies to renewables.
This greatly complicates the task of achieving an early peak in global emissions.

18. USD/litre gasoline

19. Deforestation & Tax Heavens
by the corporate sector
Galaz et al (2018)

20. A key constituent of sustainable pathways
is the evolution of global financial and
economic systems to build a global
sustainable economy.
One that steers away from the current
limited paradigm of economic growth and
reliance on abiotic resources.

21. We must put in montion transformative change that address
the root causes of the socio-ecological crisis
 Total consumption and waste
 Externalities and telecouplings
 Technology, innovation & investment
 Visions of a good life
 Values and action
 Inequalities
 Justice and inclusion in conservation
 Education and knowledge generation and sharing

22. Confronting the challenge of meeting current and future
developmental and environmental goals requires
new collective visions of
living well in/with (vs. from) nature

23. gràcies