IPBES—An Inside Take (the Series)

By Kai Chan, a Coordinating Lead Author for the Global Assessment, Chapter 5.

IPBES (the UN's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) is making waves in the arena of environmental science and policy, particularly that dealing with biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and the multiple values of nature. It is also somewhat of an enigma, especially for those who haven't participated yet in a formal role.

But if you work in environmental science and policy, you're sure to be confronted by a wide range of questions, including whether you should get involved in an assessment, task force or review process. You might also wonder how it works, how politics enters the process (or if it doesn't), what the assessments are useful for, and how to cite them.

The first IPBES Assessment was on pollination

This series of posts is based on an inside take from someone who has been involved in multiple work packages, starting with the Conceptual Framework, but also including the Global Assessment, and now also the Values Assessment and the (proposed) Transformative Change Assessment.

Let me be clear: this series of posts is not a set of advertisements for IPBES. I entered the Conceptual Framework process highly skeptical but wondering about the questions above, and how much value there is in engaging in this kind of international science-policy process. At the time (the beginning for IPBES), the only way for me to understand what IPBES was about was to get involved. I did, and I was not initially inspired to do more. In fact, I then figured it wasn't worth my while, but at least I knew why. But years later, as you'll learn in these posts, fate conspired to rope me in.

Moreover, I keep questioning deeply whether working with IPBES is the best use of my time (worth the opportunity costs), despite some important successes. Although I've been very frustrated at times (through no fault of the IPBES Secretariat—for whom I have tremendous respect—but rather due to the institutional constraints hard-wired into the organization), I'm increasingly convinced it is.

Here are the posts in chronological order:

“You’re flying across the world for a what? A conceptual framework? A diagram?” Aug 24 2013

IPBES: Intense Politics of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, Sep 4 2013

Can IPBES Make Ecosystem Service Assessments Useful? Yes (from Nicoya)—with A Few Key Tweaks, Dec 9 2013

Why Does the World Need IPBES? Sep 23 2017

Ecosystem Services and NCP: There’s Room for Both in a Bigger Tent, Mar 14 2018

Citing the IPBES Global Assessment—Appropriately and Fairly for Authors, Jun 18 2020

Push for Science in Policy through IPBES: Here's How to Get Started, Aug 12 2020


CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

Citing the IPBES Global Assessment—Appropriately and Fairly for Authors

By Kai Chan, a Coordinating Lead Author for the Global Assessment, Chapter 5.

Updated with the formatted chapters. Part of a series of posts about IPBES (the UN's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) and an inside look at its processes. Next up is Push for Science in Policy through IPBES: Here's How to Get Started).

You want an authoritative source for the decline of nature, its implications for people, the causes of this degradation. Or a single source that reviews possible futures, pathways towards sustainable ones, or promising policy options. Chances are you want to cite the IPBES Global Assessment—but what specifically, and how? There’s the Science article, the Summary for Policymakers, the whole Assessment, and its component chapters. Your choices have important implications for which documents get read, and who gets credit.

It’s tempting just to cite the Science article based on the Global Assessment. Although I’m an author of that article, and I might have done the same five years ago, I’m going to argue that this easy strategy is both unfair and inappropriate.

Díaz et al., a great citation for the Global
Assessment—but not alone.

Díaz, S., J. Settele, E. S. Brondízio, H. T. Ngo, J. Agard, A. Arneth, P. Balvanera, K. A. Brauman, S. H. M. Butchart, K. M. A. Chan, L. A. Garibaldi, K. Ichii, J. Liu, S. M. Subramanian, G. F. Midgley, P. Miloslavich, Z. Molnár, D. Obura, A. Pfaff, S. Polasky, A. Purvis, J. Razzaque, B. Reyers, R. R. Chowdhury, Y.-J. Shin, I. Visseren-Hamakers, K. J. Willis and C. N. Zayas (2019). "Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change." Science 366(6471): eaax3100. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/366/6471/eaax3100

Why? The Global Assessment was some 1800 pages, based on three years of work by ~500 authors. As you can see from the above, only a small fraction of those Assessment authors are represented above (for understandable reasons). The Science article is a brief abstraction. Think of it as an ad of sorts. In most cases, it is appropriate to cite Díaz et al., but in virtually every case it's important to also cite the Assessment as a whole (or its chapters):

IPBES (2019). Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. S. Díaz, J. Settele, E. Brondízio and H. T. Ngo. Bonn, Germany, IPBES Secretariat: 1753. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3831673 https://ipbes.net/global-assessment

For the Assessment itself as above, only four names are listed (the Co-Chairs and Hien Ngo, the essential lead staff member), but Google Scholar does credit a broader set of authors (I’m not sure whom; I do know it’s on my profile). Because of this uncertainty, but also because of the imprecision of citing a massive 1800-page Assessment for a single point, it’s often better to cite the relevant chapter. You can download the full set of citations for the IPBES Global Assessment here (in BibTeX format).

There are some points that are integrative across multiple chapters, e.g., trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services, and their causes (Chapter 2 Nature, 2 NCP, 2 Drivers); transformative change and how it might be implemented (Chapters 5 and 6). In such cases, it often makes sense to cite the whole Assessment, or the Summary for Policymakers (the “SPM”):

IPBES (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. S. Díaz, J. Settele, E. Brondízio, M. Guèze, J. Agard, A. Arneth, P. Balvanera, K. Brauman, S. Butchart, K. Chan, L. Garibaldi, K. Ichii, J. Liu, S. M. Subramanian, G. Midgley, P. Miloslavich, Z. Molnár, D. Obura, A. Pfaff, S. Polasky, A. Purvis, J. Razzaque, B. Reyers, R. R. Chowdhury, Y.-J. Shin, I. Visseren-Hamakers, K. Willis, and C. Zayas. Bonn, Germany, IPBES Secretariat. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3553579 https://www.ipbes.net/news/ipbes-global-assessment-summary-policymakers-pdf

But like with the Science article, only a small number of the 500 authors of the Assessment are authors of the SPM (the Coordinating Lead Authors, Co-Chairs, and two key staff). Again, this is understandable and appropriate (writing the SPM was a huge undertaking), and my point isn't to take issue with the rules. Rather, many Lead Authors (LAs) contributed crucial insights to the chapters that formed the basis for the SPM, so let's cite the chapters also to give them credit for that.

Moreover, the SPM is not a scientific document, but rather a science-policy document. It doesn’t cite the many thousands of relevant studies in the scientific literature. These connections should be made prominent—in fairness to the thousands of authors who contributed to that large evidence base.

If you want to make a point about the evidence, cite the Assessment itself and/or its chapters. For global goals, cite Chapter 3 (below).

So, if you want to make a point about what the over-100 nations agreed to (it was 132 in May 2019), cite the SPM, but if you want to make a point about the basis of evidence, cite the Assessment itself and/or its chapters. For those interested in those finer points, below are the chapters, appropriate citation info, and what you might find most interesting and relevant within each.

A final wrinkle I just came to understand properly: Contributing Authors (CAs), who may have contributed a substantial section to the text (or just a paragraph), are not listed on official citations—even on the chapters. This is because unlike the Lead Authors, etc., Contributing Authors are not chosen for various dimensions of diversity through official processes involving the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel and Bureau. There is a need for thorough and even representation of (e.g.) scholars from less-developed nations, so I'm not arguing with the rules. But if there is a peer-reviewed paper associated with a chapter, it should better reflect the intellectual contributions of the full set of authors.

...

Chapter 1 sets the stage for the Assessment, and introduces an important historical narrative about economic development, and how some nations and regions have developed more rapidly somewhat at the expense of others, by externalizing impacts on nature.

Brondízio, E. S., S. Díaz, J. Settele, H. T. Ngo, M. Guèze, Y. Aumeeruddy-Thomas, X. Bai, A. Geschke, Z. Molnár, A. Niamir, U. Pascual, A. Simcock and J. Jaureguiberry (2019). Chapter 1: Introduction to and rationale of the global assessment. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. T. Ngo: xxx-yyy. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3831852

Chapter 2 has three parts, each essentially forming its own chapter. These review the trends since 1970 in (a) nature, including biodiversity; (b) nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem services; and (c) the drivers of change in nature and its contributions to people:

Purvis, A., Z. Molnar, D. Obura, K. Ichii, K. Willis, N. Chettri, E. Dulloo, A. Hendry, B. Gabrielyan, J. Gutt, U. Jacob, E. Keskin, A. Niamir, B. Öztürk and P. Jaureguiberry (2019). Status and trends - nature. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3832005

Brauman, K. A., L. A. Garibaldi, S. Polasky, C. Zayas, Y. Aumeeruddy-Thomas, P. Brancalion, F. DeClerck, M. Mastrangelo, N. Nkongolo, H. Palang, L. Shannon, U. B. Shrestha and M. Verma (2019). Status and trends - nature’s contributions to people (NCP). Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3832035

Balvanera, P., A. Pfaff, A. Viña, E. García Frapolli, L. Merino, P. A. Minang, N. Nagabata, S. Hussein and A. Sidorovich (2019). Status and trends - drivers of change. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3831881

Chapter 3 assess the progress toward international goals for nature (e.g., the Aichi Targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity) and for sustainability (the UN Sustainable Development Goals):

Butchart, S. H. M., P. Miloslavich, B. Reyers, S. M. Subramanian, C. Adams, E. Bennett, B. Czúcz, L. Galetto, K. Galvin, V. Reyes-García, G. L. R., T. Bekele, W. Jetz, I. B. M. Kosamu, M. G. Palomo, M. Panahi, E. R. Selig, G. S. Singh, D. Tarkhnishvili, H. Xu, A. J. Lynch, M. T. H. and A. Samakov (2019). Assessing progress towards meeting major international objectives related to nature and nature’s contributions to people. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3832052

Chapter 4 assesses a wide range of scenarios and models projecting (mostly non-transformative) changes into the future:

Shin, Y. J., A. Arneth, R. Roy Chowdhury, G. F. Midgley, P. Leadley, Y. Agyeman Boafo, Z. Basher, E. Bukvareva, A. Heinimann, A. I. Horcea-Milcu, P. Kindlmann, M. Kolb, Z. Krenova, T. Oberdorff, P. Osano, I. Palomo, R. Pichs Madruga, P. Pliscoff, C. Rondinini, O. Saito, J. Sathyapalan and T. Yue (2019). Plausible futures of nature, its contributions to people and their good quality of life. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3832073

Chapter 5 assesses the pathways toward sustainable futures, reviewing a broad range of optimistic scenarios, and identifying the levers and leverage points for transformative changes towards sustainability:

Chan, K. M. A., J. Agard, J. Liu, A. P. D. d. Aguiar, D. Armenteras, A. K. Boedhihartono, W. W. L. Cheung, S. Hashimoto, G. C. H. Pedraza, T. Hickler, J. Jetzkowitz, M. Kok, M. Murray-Hudson, P. O'Farrell, T. Satterfield, A. K. Saysel, R. Seppelt, B. Strassburg, D. Xue, O. Selomane, L. Balint, A. Mohamed (2019). Pathways towards a Sustainable Future. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3832099

Chapter 5 has also sparked peer-reviewed articles, including one in People and Nature. That paper, about the levers and leverage points, includes a critical reflection of what is novel, as well as a clearer and more scholarly representation of the rigorous expert deliberation process that yielded those insights. (And there, finally, contributing authors will finally get credit.)

Chan, K. M. A., D. R. Boyd, R. K. Gould, J. Jetzkowitz, J. Liu, B. Muraca, R. Naidoo, P. Olmsted, T. Satterfield, O. Selomane, G. G. Singh, R. Sumaila, H. T. Ngo, A. K. Boedhihartono, J. Agard, A. P. D. d. Aguiar, D. Armenteras, L. Balint, C. Barrington-Leigh, W. W. L. Cheung, S. Díaz, J. Driscoll, K. Esler, H. Eyster, E. J. Gregr, S. Hashimoto, G. C. H. Pedraza, T. Hickler, M. Kok, T. Lazarova, A. A. A. Mohamed, M. Murray-Hudson, P. O'Farrell, I. Palomo, A. K. Saysel, R. Seppelt, J. Settele, B. Strassburg, D. Xue and E. S. Brondízio (2020). "Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability." People and Nature. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10124

 

Chapter 6 assesses options, obstacles and opportunities for transformative change, focusing more narrowly than 5 on particular policy and governance tools:

Razzaque, J., I. J. Visseren-Hamakers, P. McElwee, G. M. Rusch, E. Kelemen, E. Turnhout, M. Williams, A. P. Gautam, A. Fernandez-Llamazares, I. Chan, L. Gerber, M. Islar, S. Karim, M. Lim, L. J., L. G., A. Mohammed, E. Mungatana and R. Muradian (2019). Options for Decision-makers. Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. E. S. Brondízio, J. Settele, S. Díaz and H. Ngo. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3832107

CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.

Q&A with SPI’s Dr. Kai Chan, Lead Co-Author of Landmark U.N. Biodiversity Report: Visiting SPI scholar Dr. Kai Chan helped write the recently-launched landmark U.N. Biodiversity Report and negotiated its release in Paris.

This Q & A first appeared on the Smart Prosperity Institute on June 5, 2019. 

To see more, watch the entire webinar on the 'Landmark U.N. Biodiversity Report with Lead Co-Author', Kai Chan.

Visiting SPI scholar Dr. Kai Chan helped write the recently-launched landmark U.N. Biodiversity Report and negotiated its release in Paris.

Recently, Dr. Chan held a webinar for hundreds of participants on his insights and experience. He discussed the report findings on biodiversity loss – its implications for Canada, and the solutions we need to embrace to transform our global financial and economic systems towards sustainability.

Due to the overwhelming response, not all submitted participant questions were able to be addressed in the allotted webinar time. SPI sat down with Dr. Chan afterwards to answer them:

Can you speak to the role and responsibilities of Indigenous Peoples in the process? IPBES made a concerted effort to consider other ways of knowing and knowledge systems yet these solutions are very much acknowledging the capitalist approach. I understand the need for a new method to our capitalist approach to the environment but do you see a transformative change coming through other ways of knowing?

You’re absolutely correct. Throughout the Global Assessment process, IPBES put a lot of emphasis on Indigenous Peoples and local communities and other systems of knowledge. I didn’t go into this in detail during the webinar, but the fifth leverage point, “Practice justice and inclusion in conservation” is very much about including Indigenous Peoples and local communities in meaningful ways, including via co-governance agreements.

Furthermore, other ways of knowing are central to the eighth leverage point, “Promote education and knowledge generation and sharing”, where Indigenous and local knowledge are recognized as equally important (albeit different) to science. There is a great wealth of information about ecosystems in local and traditional knowledge and practices.

How do you operationalize these ambitious policies in governments that may be hostile? Can you speak more about the political will side of things and how your proposals can overcome political obstacles?

Some governments will indeed be hostile, and even those that are on board in principle probably won’t just jump on board and simply implement the changes we call for—unless they hear from their constituents that such changes are favoured. This is why I have put so much emphasis on the need for civic action and consumer action, including in this new commentary.

Following the release of the Global Assessment, we launched this Citizen’s call to action. It’s not the end, only the beginning, but intended to bring together folks who want real change, and to show our collective support to policymakers in many places.

As a petition for general structural changes, it won’t take off like petitions for individual tortured pets and wild animals, but perhaps it can gather steam with the help of folks like you sharing with friends and family with a personal explanation as to why you think this kind of change is needed.

How do we address the growing popularity of attacking science and the perception it is pushing an agenda at the costs of peoples’ rights or entitlement? How do you counter the deep pockets of industry that promotes “alternative facts” which are taken up as ‘gospel’ by the masses?

Attacks on science and the perpetuation of fake news are such damaging developments. I think there are two key answers: First, we need to explain science simply. People are skeptical of what they don’t understand, and it doesn’t help when many scientists react to the nervousness of speaking in public by cloaking themselves in a veil of expertise via technical—jargon-laden—language. Most people are capable of understanding the gist of most relevant science. We just need to do a better job of communicating accessibly.

Second, we need to engage the skeptics and their arguments. I know many folks say not to engage the trolls, but many of the folks who disagree are not monsters—they just see things differently. I have taken to engaging with them, respectfully but firmly (I cut it off as soon if they won’t be polite). Once I’ve responded as a human being, sometimes I need to explain that I’m not in it for the money or fame. I spent thousands of hours on the IPBES Global Assessment, as a volunteer, and the attention we’ve received is a pleasant surprise (not something I expected)!

Engaging with the arguments of skeptics—again clearly and accessibly—is essential. Otherwise, we are talking past each other, and most folks can’t make heads or tails of the truth because both sides may sound sensible and neither side addresses the other side’s claims. Growing out of the Citizen’s Call (above), this is something we’re now planning to do at a new initiative called CoSphere: make sense of complex, contentious issues in clear and simple terms. Armed with this information, people can act with confidence.

The citizen call and Global Sustainable Economy sounds a bit like a “voluntary biodiversity tax” on consumer goods/behaviors. Are you worried that it will be framed this way (given how controversial carbon taxes have been in places like Canada and the US)?

There’s a big difference between a voluntary fee and a tax. If a fee is voluntary (even if it’s opt-out), it generally doesn’t get framed as a tax—appropriately. The hope is that we can show that the fee is something that people will be willing to pay—first a minority of people, but then more and more as it becomes more socially normal. Once it is normal, resistance to it being made mandatory should be small. Rather, the majority is likely to demand that, so that the laggards can’t free-load on the rest. It’ll take a groundswell of pushing from folks like you to make it normal, but we believe in people. It’s just the right thing to do, to take responsibility for our environmental messes.

Regarding the 2020 biodiversity conference in Beijing, do you think there will be another set of changed Aichi Goals that the member nations should achieve by 2050? Or will the approach to biodiversity be different? Will CoSphere be proposed in this conference as well so that international bodies can implement this project?

I have been an eager participant in the Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 process for a Global Biodiversity Framework, but I don’t feel ‘in the know’. I’m not sure whether there will be new goals, like the Aichi Targets. It would be great if a CoSphere-like program were on the table as a possibility, but I haven’t heard anything yet for that upcoming conference.

Understanding that this is a global issue that will require a global response, how can we ensure that the “calls to action” are focused on regionally specific actions plans? I ask because of the understanding that each ecosphere and bioregion of the earth has a unique set of growing conditions, which will require a different response to the challenges they face. For example, the “Project Beef” initiative--beef is such a regionally specific challenge. Here on Northern Great Plains, Native Prairie is critically endangered. If it wasn’t for beef grazing these grasslands (which need grazing to stay healthy) there would be even more pressure to convert the Native Prairie to other agricultural uses. So beef production is a key component of Grassland Conservation. However, in the Amazon rainforest, beef cattle production is a key driver for forest clearing, meaning that in that ecosphere, beef production is not sustainable. Point being, we need a global response that is regionally specific to ensure practices can be considered within the context of the region.

Bang on: we need a global response that is tailored for regional differences. This is a point we emphasized strongly in Chapter 5 of the Global Assessment, and it’s one that’s built into how we envision CoSphere working. The notion is that mitigation funding from individuals and organizations would get distributed through a series of regional participatory processes. These processes would include science as well as Indigenous and local knowledge to identify the pressures that are especially problematic in a given region, and the mitigation actions that are especially helpful and desirable, locally.

There was little mention of population growth in your presentation. Does the report deal with the underlying causes like population growth?

Yes, population growth is explicitly a key component of “Total consumption and waste”, the second leverage point. Total consumption is a product of population size and per-capita consumption. We bundle them together because it’s the combination that matters, and almost every place needs to address the combination, although richer nations generally have to focus more on per-capita consumption and less-developed nations generally have to focus more on population growth.

Bouncing back to the example you mentioned about compensating beef consumption, could you expand on voluntary compensation markets for ecological services other than carbon?

The idea is that we can mitigate the impacts associated with our purchase of beef by paying to help farmers and other stewards of the land do things that they often already want to do. E.g., beef production is associated with greenhouse gas emissions, soil loss, wildlife declines, and degradation of water quality. These impacts can be addressed at local or regional scales by paying farmers and others to stock at lower densities or rotate livestock sustainably, improve soil conservation practices, restore native grasses, and fence streams to keep cattle from degrading riparian vegetation. My group (CHANS Lab) has done a lot of work on the design of ‘incentive’ or stewardship programs, and how to make them effective, inclusive and sustainable.

Where does the traditional work of conservation fit in all this?

The traditional work of conservation (including NGOs, government agencies, etc.), protecting and restoring lands and waters, is absolutely fundamental. It is implicit throughout the pathways forward, including a Global Sustainable Economy and CoSphere. In the Assessment, we found—as so many other assessments have found—that we need to redouble our efforts.

But we also found that simply saying that wasn’t going to make it happen, and that we needed changes to the economy, politics and policies that make conservation and restoration normal, and that prevent the damage to nature before it even happens. The Global Sustainable Economy and CoSphere are intended to do just that, so that conservation and restoration are activities that all organizations and individuals eventually commit to do (or fund) at the scale of our impacts on nature.

Economizing nature as a political strategy: Is it working?

A review of Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics. Jessica Dempsey. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. 296 pp., illus. $XX.XX (ISBN: 9781118640555 paper). Book review published in BioScience. Amazon.ca

Marc Tadaki and Kai Chan

The idea that we need to “sell nature to save it” has become somewhat of a truism in discussions about the conservation of nature. Financial flows change the world, the argument goes, and if conservationists can alter those flows, they can change the world. This has led, in recent decades, to collaborations between ecologists, economists and governments in attempts to mainstream biodiversity and ecosystem services into a variety of economic framings and tools. By bringing biodiversity into the domain of economic calculus, perhaps the inherently enterprising capacities of nature can be valued and preserved. In other words, by extending the market to include biodiversity, nature should save itself!

Enterprising Nature is the first book by Jessica Dempsey, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. In Enterprising Nature, Dempsey draws on over 10 years of research into global biodiversity politics to offer a fresh perspective to these ever-important debates about the financialization and commodification of nature. In simple terms, Dempsey sets out to evaluate whether “selling nature to save it” is actually working as a political strategy. By tracing the networks of people and ideas that have influenced conservationist arguments to commodify nature, Dempsey takes readers through a cumulative series of choices made by scientists and their collaborators that has resulted in framing the conservation “problem” within a market-based framework. In so doing, she provides a window into a room that many of us have long inhabited, but whose dimensions and dynamics we have never seen so clearly. Throughout this account, Dempsey points to other ways of framing local and global biodiversity that have been rejected and marginalized along the way. By revisiting these choices and their alternatives, she argues, a new global biodiversity politics can be envisioned, and perhaps, pursued.

The argument of Enterprising Nature is developed over eight concise but meaty chapters. The introduction sketches the contours of an emerging global discourse of an “enterprising nature” that seeks to bring biodiversity within economic tools and framings. In the first section of the book, Dempsey examines two major developments in the history of enterprising nature: the ecological thinking promoted by Paul and Anne Ehrlich and others in the 1970s and 1980s, and the work conducted within Stockholm’s Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics. Through these developments, scientists shifted away from a radical critique of capitalism to instead create an “ecological-economic tribunal for (nonhuman) life” (p57). This involves constructing an inventory of ecosystem functions and then assigning equivalences, weightings, and rankings to these functions so that certain functions can be prioritised for human needs.

The book’s second section examines contemporary international efforts to value biodiversity within a market framework. In the realm of global science and governmental policy, initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the decision-support tool InVEST are used to explore the assumptions, exclusions, and implications of embedding economic frameworks in policy settings. In the private sector, Dempsey then analyses attempts by scientists to represent biodiversity as a material risk to investment actors. This risk-based “venture ecology” (p128) is less concerned with making ecosystems into commodities, and more concerned with using ecological data to reduce risk and make a “smoother space for development” (p129). As an end-goal for conservation, then, venture ecology seeks only strategic degradation rather than large-scale rehabilitation of ecological functioning.

The third section of the book considers whether any of the promised finance is flowing from the institutionalization of these new economic instruments. Dempsey maps out the figurative ecology of biodiversity finance: its main ‘species’ of actors (e.g., NGOs, government agencies, bankers), their natural habitats of interaction, and their functions within the system. She draws on observations from conferences on biodiversity finance to consider the progress being made in attempts to economize and commodify biodiversity, noting the challenges and failures that characterise many of these attempts, including the failed proposal for a “Green Development Mechanism”. In the international policy arena, Dempsey reports her experiences of meetings under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, analyzing how colonial histories and North-South power differentials justify parties’ resistances to contemporary proposals to create financial mechanisms for biodiversity conservation.

Dempsey concludes that the promise of “selling nature to save it” has born sparse and stunted fruit; that this promise is “Conceptually dominant, but substantively marginal” (p234). Rather than allying with existing elites and seeking to extend capitalist structures of extraction and exploitation, Dempsey argues that scientists should instead consider allying with green social movements, indigenous communities, and all those who are seeking to challenge the economic relations that have produced (and continue to produce) ecological devastation at a planetary scale.

The book is a must-read for environmental scientists who have long been immersed in a world where efforts to ‘enterprise’ nature (i.e., sell it, broadly) are seen as necessary politically, and where critics are too often dismissed as utopian dreamers. Dempsey cannot be dismissed so easily. Though the book is ultimately critical of attempts to economize nature, it is sympathetic to the scientists, economists, and others who have tried to leverage ecosystem services as a political strategy to halt and reverse ecological degradation. Dempsey’s most compelling doubts and criticisms are often our own, articulated through the surprising frank words of frontline proponents for ‘enterprising’ nature—e.g., wondering whether the ‘enterprising’ nature project has truly yielded much, for all the celebration, or claiming that ecosystem service markets are merely a fad. Dempsey even highlights the radical political implications of ecological science, while also drawing attention to the explicit and intentional choices that many scientists have made to ally with corporate and political power to make their case for conservation. Against these capitalist and elitist tendencies, Dempsey advocates for a “critical ecology” that will “discard dreams of mastery, to embrace highly dynamic, uncertain, and deep unknowns of the future” (p121), and that such an ecology should be “conducted… not to serve elite needs, but to serve [social] movements with a real chance of creating abundant, diverse futures” (p121).

The central challenge posed by the book lies in its prescription for conservation’s future success. Given that Dempsey, by her own admission, was always a sceptic of the neoliberal turn in conservation, readers may not be fully convinced by a journey that resulted in continued scepticism. Dempsey’s call for a grassroots politics of opposition to the fundamental capitalist forces causing environmental degradation may ring true but idealistic: of course it is needed, but can it redirect the juggernaut of global supply chains and consumer demands, when even the fiercest ecological activists cannot escape these relations? Ultimately we are all complicit in the destruction wrought by the capitalist logics of property, value, and profit, and many of us are already willing to challenge these fundamentals if given the chance. While emerging nuanced strategies seek to practically rework economic tools and logics in search of environmental justice, this book opts for an oppositional stance to financialization in toto, which may also prove constraining. However, nuances aside, the book does open these issues for discussion in a productive way, and for this reason it deserves a wide and engaged readership.

In sum, Enterprising Nature provides an empirically rigorous and analytically insightful assessment of the “selling nature to save it” hypothesis. Scientists, economists, policymakers, and conservationists of all stripes will benefit from this novel analysis of the interrelationships between biodiversity science, policy and finance. Dempsey excavates some important choices to scientists about how we choose to “do politics” through our science and through our alliances. With the terrain of biodiversity science and politics set to shift drastically over the coming years in the U.S. and internationally, more than ever conservationists need new and radical ideas; and this book provides some.  

Science contributions to international conservation policies: a perspective from COP13 in Cancun, Mexico

By Alejandra Echeverri and Charlotte Whitney 

The past three weeks, in Cancun at COP13, have given us some hard-hitting concrete and surprising lessons about the role of science—and scientists—in policy.  COP13 is the 13^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations meeting on biodiversity, a collective global agreement to change the course of biodiversity loss. The meeting covered several crucial topics: Mainstreaming biodiversity (i.e., integrating biodiversity considerations) in productive sectors (e.g., forests sector, agriculture, tourism and fisheries), the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs), marine debris, and invasive alien species, among others.

As PhD students who have spent much of our lives in university, and comparatively little time doing advocacy or policy work at the international level, we were curious about the role of science in these types of meetings. The permanent discourse that we perceive from academics is: “Policy should be more informed by science. Scientists need to go talk to policy-makers more often”. From our perspective, the overall feeling among academics is that policy-makers and scientists don’t talk to each other very often, and that more integration between these two groups is needed. At least before coming to this meeting, we also thought this was the case. But, turns out that (at least at this meeting) this is not true!

In fact, most of the draft decisions of the policy documents discussed here are well-informed by science. Many paragraphs have a wealth of scientific terminology that encompasses relevant scientific information, and to our surprise, even new scientific advances. But we would like to share three lessons we have learned about science informing policy in this setting.

The good: policy is paying attention to science

•      Some policy-makers are indeed paying attention to current science

We have attended the plenaries and listened to the discussions and negotiations about the aforementioned topics. Some national policymakers are indeed paying attention to science, and importantly to current science, such as the science on microplastics.

•  The discussions of policy-makers are often about scientific terms

For a specific paragraph, we often spend 1 hour negotiating the appropriate language. A fascinating discussion occurred over the following paragraph, which referred to priority actions for mitigating and preventing the impacts of marine debris on marine and coastal biodiversity and habitats:

“Establish a collaborative platform for sharing experiences and exchange of information on good clean-up practice in beaches and coastal environments, pelagic and surface sea areas, ports, marinas and inland waterways… “[1]

Parties went back and forth over the inclusion or deletion of the world pelagic and surface areas. Morocco wanted to delete “pelagic and surface areas” and use “at sea areas”. Canada wanted to keep pelagic, and said that parties should not omit this area for cleanup efforts because the microplastics accumulate also in the water column. Australia, Philippines agreed with Canada. Colombia wanted to keep the word pelagic and said that this is the accurate scientific terminology. Kenya agreed. Oman proposed using “and other marine environments instead”…. On and on. It was an arduous discussion. At the end “pelagic and surface areas ended up staying”. Discussions like these reflect both how scientific terminology is actually being addressed by policy-makers, but also reveal the background politics that may influence the decision currently in discussion.

Contact group on EBSAs during COP13, photo by IISD, ENB

• Many of the party delegates are scientists.

We met amazing people throughout this week. We learned that for the big delegations (e.g., Canada, Colombia) half of their team (ca. 8 people total) are scientists, who are trained in various topics, such as population genetics, fisheries, terrestrial ecology, etc. The other half are lawyers or policy analysts trained in the legal aspects of environmental issues. Many of these delegates have worked as scientists and researchers for many years, and delegations seem to arrange their team in order to have one scientist paired with one legal/policy expert at the table at all times. However, many countries are underrepresented (e.g., Syria only has 1 delegate in total), so this is not the case for all delegations.

The bad: Many scientists present their work to policy-makers as if they were academic colleagues

At many side events organized by big organizations that we respect (e.g., International Union for Conservation of Nature) , panel sessions are full of scientists. These sessions are often 1.5 hours long and talks take up almost all the time, leaving only 15 minutes at the end for questions. In principle, these talks are interesting. But they follow the same format of scientific conferences, which does not seem to be useful for policy-makers. Scientists present their results in the same way they present it to their academic colleagues, e.g., with complicated graphs and fancy conceptual frameworks. They don’t engage policy-makers into their conversations because they don’t leave room for discussion. Also, concepts are presented as abstract and theoretical, rather than concrete and grounded in real-world examples. We would favour sessions organized as workshops, with fewer presenters overall. Such a format would leave room for better dialogue and richer collaborations. Although scientists have made efforts to make their findings known at policy conferences, in our opinion they have failed to tailor their messages for policy-makers.

The Ugly: Much of the science presented is not helpful for policy

Some scientists advocate for more science to be included in policy, and on the political side we see increased demand for “evidence-based-policy”. But much of the science being presented here is not helpful for policy. For example, it is hard to understand why scientific talks that are “tailored to policy-makers” keep referring to future research questions, and keep acknowledging that despite spending the last 8 (or X amount of) years studying an issue, we don’t have a clear answer and that we need to learn more—why not focus on what we do know that does have relevance for policy? If scientists want to inform policy more, we really need to focus on the product rather than the task. By this we mean, explaining how to use the frameworks, indicators, etc. that we develop.

Plenary room during COP13. One of the tables is reserved for scientists, who get a voice during the negotiations. Photo by IISD, ENB.

Despite challenges and areas for improvement, our exposure to hundreds of scientists and policy makers from 196 parties who are trying to reach the Aichi Biodiversity targets is a motivating reminder of how many of us care deeply about these issues, and are working hard to make progress.

Alejandra Echeverri and Charlotte Whitney are youth delegates with GYBN (Global Youth Biodiversity Network) at COP13 in Cancun, Mexico. Alejandra is a PhD student in the CHANS lab working on bird communities and their associated ecosystem services, and Charlotte is a PhD Student in the Marine Ethnoecology lab at the University of Victoria studying marine spatial planning and adaptive capacity for climate change

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[1] Paragraph 10c. CRP2. WG2, available at: https://www.cbd.int/conferences/2016/cop-13/documents.