Joint Symposium on Biodiversity Assessment and support for IPBES

Policy, environmental management, and conservation in an interconnected world of ongoing rapid change rely on adequate biodiversity science, data, and infrastructure to support decisions. Regional and global assessment processes under the auspices of IPBES (the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) are now underway and provide the first of a potentially ongoing evaluation of status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and of drivers of their change, tied in with global policy processes. What are the key science, data and infrastructure needs to support a global biodiversity monitoring and assessment into the future? Which are the key data, knowledge and technology gaps? Which questions should be asked now, which methods developed, which new types of information integrated, or which complementary data collection created, to meet these challenges?

The 2016 event will in particular bring biodiversity and global change scientists from Europe, Africa, and Asia to this discussion and add as additional focus the scientific needs for IPBES, in particular on indicators and scenarios. Key goals of the conference are to link the main research groups active in this area, improve data sharing, develop collaborative analyses, realize potential synergies and advance international cooperation. 

Confirmed plenary speakers

• Steve Beissinger (UC Berkeley)
• Brad Cardinale (University of Michigan)
• Markus Fischer (GMBA, University of Bern)
• Antoine Guisan (University of Lausanne)
• Rob Guralnick (University of Florida)
• Walter Jetz (Yale University)
• Steve Kelling (Director of Information Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
• Anne Larigauderie (Executive Secretary IPBES)
• Paul Leadley (University Paris Sud)
• Anne-Helene Prieur-Richard (Future Earth Global Hub Director)
• Martin Wikelski (Director, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology)
• Christian Wirth (Director, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv))
• Guy Woodward (Imperial College London)
• Shin Yunne-Jai (Institute of Research for Development, Montpellier)

The draft programme of the conference is available here.

For participating in the conference, please contact the organizers via email.