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.

COMMENTARY: How the coronavirus pandemic is a symptom of bigger problems

(Kai Chan's Commentary for Global News)

I worry about COVID-19 and the sweeping economic harm it is bringing, but I worry far more if nothing big changes.

Four systemic vulnerabilities created a perfect-storm context for the coronavirus. Each is a product of short-sighted action by individuals and governments, which distributes impacts on the rest of the globe. Each one also contributes importantly to a raft of other global problems, with massive social and economic effects. We would do well to start addressing them now.

In a nutshell, we need to clamp down on the wildlife trade; normalize physical distancing in regular life; invest in health care like a sacred public good; and reconfigure the economy to provide what people really need....

Read more at
https://globalnews.ca/news/6792989/coronavirus-preventing-another-pandemic/


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.

Scientific Guidance on the Environment Has Utterly Transformed—Can Policy Keep Up?

Kai M. A. Chan, republished from The Canadian Science Policy Magazine

The bar for science policy just got a whole lot higher—all across the world. It’s not clear that Canadian policymaking is up to the task.

The relevance of science for policy used to be quite contained. Science helped set the limits for arsenic in drinking water, for particulate matter of various sizes in indoor and outdoor air, and for population sizes and trends in determining whether species were vulnerable, threatened, or endangered.

Over the past few years—and particularly this year—the domain of science policy has exploded to include systemic governance issues that were previously the sole domain of economics and politics. How should governments encourage industrial production? How should we make management decisions about resources (not just which decisions, but how precautionary, adaptive, inclusive, and integrative across sectors and jurisdictions)? Also, how should we regulate which chemicals can be used in consumer goods, and even how we should limit the material and energy we collectively consume?

How did this happen? It happened thanks to two major but under-appreciated advances, in science-policy processes and in science.

The science-policy landscape always included studies offering implicit guidance on such topics, but until now that guidance was never both explicit and officially sanctioned by 132 of the world’s nations. The innovation here comes in the form of UN bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the newer Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Whereas in the past, individual articles had implications for large-scale systemic decisions, they never had force for several reasons. Many were too limited in scope, in at least one dimension. Either they were local scale or they were global but without distinction between national contexts. Many addressed just one challenge—e.g., climate change—without consideration of side-effects of actions on others. Many were not explicit enough about what might need to change, while others were too explicit, reaching beyond the evidence. And for every study with one conclusion, other studies—equally reputable for most policymakers—seemed to contradict it.

No longer: now assessments of IPCC and IPBES cover a global scope with regional differentiation; they review all the relevant evidence while distinguishing the robustness of different studies; and they are explicit about policy options towards already accepted global and national goals. Most important, these assessments are not merely science—their central findings are thoroughly reviewed, edited and approved in several steps by member nations. Thus, not only are the studies relevant, pointed, and authoritative, they get officially endorsed by the nations themselves.

The second key advance is in the integrative nature of some of the science. A central reality of policymaking is tradeoffs, such that a solution to one challenge is no solution at all if it exacerbates another challenge. Not only have individual studies become more integrative across multiple considerations—e.g., climate, energy, and land-based food production—but assessment processes have become more integrative yet.

As one example that I know well, thanks to the pleasure of leading this effort with more than thirty world-leading scientists, is Chapter 5 of the IPBES Global Assessment, “Pathways towards a Sustainable Future” (Chan et al. 2019). This integration included a comprehensive and systematic evaluation of future scenarios and pathway analyses that addressed the challenge of mitigating climate change while providing sufficient energy for humanity and maintaining space for agriculture and life on land. Beyond that, it meant the same assessments of scenarios and pathways for five other foci of difficult tradeoffs: feeding humanity without undermining biodiversity; protecting and restoring nature in an inclusive way that respects human rights and contributes to human well-being; securing seafood for the future while protecting nature in oceans and coasts; maintaining freshwater for human uses and aquatic biodiversity; and resourcing our growing cities while maintaining the nature that underpins them. These six focal points correspond to several UN Sustainable Development Goals and Aichi Targets for Biodiversity, which nations have agreed and committed to through the General Assembly and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The biggest challenge is that tradeoffs also reach across these six foci, just as intensive agriculture might produce masses of food and leave space for forests and wetlands, but it risks unacceptably tainting freshwater supplies for both people and aquatic life. Accordingly, our international team had to evaluate whether solutions exist to simultaneously achieve global goals across all six foci, and what the broader literature has to say about those solutions. Never before has a single analysis straddled such an expansive problem at the scales relevant to national commitments.

The answers pinpointed changes that were more systemic than ever, getting to the heart of what it means to govern a nation, state, or municipality. Solutions that addressed all six foci tended to employ five different ‘levers’ of governance interventions, and they tended to do so at eight different ‘leverage points’ in social systems. For instance, virtually all pathways involved a substantial reform of subsidies and incentives away from boosting production at the expense of the environment, toward improving environmental stewardship (a lever). And they applied these levers at ‘leverage points’ like prevailing notions and narratives of a good life, recognizing that the inadvertent adoption and promotion of largely western notions of success that entail high levels of material consumption are neither conducive to human well-being nor to achieving collective goals for nature.

Is Canadian science-policy up to the task of contributing to sustainable pathways for the planet? It remains to be seen, but what is becoming clear is that the science is there to assist in that task—and to evaluate progress toward it.

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.

Mental health crisis: in the middle of the storm

By Jai Ranganathan

“I don’t deserve to be here.”

“I am the stupidest person in my lab.”

“Everyone can clearly see how idiotic my work is.”

“I am a joke.”

Does any of this sound familiar? When I was getting my doctorate in ecology, phrases like these formed the spinning center of a nonstop interior dialogue of sorrow and self-recrimination.

And, unfortunately, I wasn’t the only graduate student who felt this way. Recent research has shown something that almost everyone connected to academia knows: there is a mental health crisis among graduate students (REF 1 at bottom).

Treatment resistant depression. Anxiety disorder. Imposter syndrome. We have invented an almost endless supply of words of clinical and bloodless terms to describe the ways we can silently suffer in our own minds. But none of them can truly describe the searing experience of actually being in the middle of a mental health hurricane.

If you’re a graduate student (or anyone really) in the middle of the mental storm, it is really easy to blame yourself for being in the maelstrom to begin with. It’s really easy to think of yourself as fatally flawed, somehow intrinsically undeserving of being anywhere near academia.

But of course, none of that is true. Mental health concerns, even severe long-lasting mental health concerns, don’t have to prevent highly successful academic careers. In her book Lab Girl, ecologist Hope Jahren talks in detail about how she navigated academia even with her bipolar diagnosis. And Kay Redfield Jamison’s entire career as an extremely prominent psychologist at Johns Hopkins University has been closely tied to her own long-standing mental health issues (her book An Unquiet Mind is a classic memoir of living an academic life with mental illness as a constant companion).

Author Jai Ranganathan, of SciFund Challenge, bringing
scientists together to build a more science-engaged world.

So, if you’re in the middle of the storm, the key question is surely: how do I get out? Just speaking from my own experience in the storm (and not as a mental health professional, which I’m not), I can say for sure that the number one thing is to not ignore it. Like attempting to run a marathon while ignoring a broken leg, ignoring your own mental health issues in the middle of your graduate career is likely to turn out poorly and with lots of unnecessary suffering.

So what should you do? We all know the general advice. See a counselor. Take medication. Go to a support group. Take better care of yourself. Etc.

But here’s the thing that they don’t tell you. Many of those mental-health-improvement things won’t work in your specific case. It happens all the time. A particular medication makes all the difference in the world for a given person but yet, for another person with the exact same condition, that medication is not effective. For one person, going running daily is the key to mental health improvement, while for another going running is the sure-fire path to more misery.

Unfortunately, the solution to mental health issues for any particular individual is almost certainly going to be idiosyncratic and individual. If you are trying to get out of the mental health storm, there simply is no substitute for trying a million things out, knowing that some of them (most of them?) are going to fail. And the fact that there is a high failure rate in the things that you try to help yourself doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong - it’s just the nature of the process. It’s also just like trying to find a pair of pants that fit really well - it would be pretty unlikely that the first pair that you try on in the story truly fit. But if you just keep trying on more things, you’ll get there eventually - so long as you keep trying.

So, where do you get started? In my own particular idiosyncratic case, I have found to be particularly helpful the program known as WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan). Through WRAP, you’ll find a ton of ideas for things that you can try.

And what if it isn’t you in the storm, but instead a friend, colleague, or family member? What can can you do to help them out? The good news is that there is a lot you can do. Research indicates that social support can make a gigantic difference in mental health recovery. This is true even for conditions like schizophrenia, which in the past had been considered to be treatable chiefly through medication-only approaches (REF 2). If you are trying to figure out how to approach someone who seems to be struggling, here are two resources to check out (1, 2). If the person that you are concerned about is someone with whom you share a close connection, I would strongly recommend attending a support group meeting intended for those with mentally ill loved ones. These groups are truly lifesavers for so many and are commonly held as community meetings. If you are in the United States, you can find your closest support group via the National Alliance for Mental Health. In Canada, a great place to find a support group is through your local branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

[KC: for more on mental health issues in grad school, see this great  2-part series by Sarah Klain, Ally Thompson, Karina Benessaiah, and Verena Seufert]

Reference
1. Evans, T.M., Bira, L., Gastelum, J.B., Weiss, L.T., Vanderford, N.L. (2018). Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology (36) 282–284.
2. Kane, J.M., et al. (2015). Comprehensive Versus Usual Community Care for First-Episode Psychosis: 2-Year Outcomes From the NIMH RAISE Early Treatment Program. The American Journal of Psychiatry 173 (4): 362-372.

When are models too complex? What counts as independent (and representative) data for model testing?

In a Hindsight blog for Functional Ecologists, of the British Ecological Society, Kai Chan and Edward Gregr tackle some crucial questions about model building and validation. Everyone knows that you need independent and representative data to properly test a model, but what counts as 'independent' and 'representative'? How are these concepts affected by scale? If you want to keep up with evolving norms for proper model building and testing, this post may help.

“Sleep Is for the Plane Ride Home”? NO: Let’s Stop Celebrating Sacrificing Our Health

By Kai Chan

GYA sticker, photo courtesy
of Ignacio Palomo.

I’m tired of fellow academics boasting about how little sleep they got, as if it’s some badge of honour that they’re willing to give it all for their science or scholarship. Not that it’s always boasting, mind you--sometimes, more appropriately, it’s explaining crankiness or bloodshot eyes, acknowledging procrastination or overcommitment, or just plain complaining. Those are all fair game.

But when it sounds like boasting, comments like this propagate a dangerous celebration of academic martyrdom that normalizes unhealthy habits and turns many a brilliant student away from academia. This is true even though the problem of sacrificing sleep goes well beyond academia, including law, business, medicine, etc.

“Sleep is for the plane ride home”? No, sleep is for the
weary! This weary traveller didn’t make it to the plane--
here she’s sprawled over our luggage in the lounge.

I’ve definitely remarked on sleepless nights in ways that might sound like a brag. No longer.

Too many students tell me they don’t want to go on in academia, because they see how busy their professors are, and they can’t imagine that being a good life. Who can blame them? But is that really what we want for academia? A profession that weeds out those who prioritize family and health over working 60+ hour weeks? What a recipe for dysfunctional workplaces and academic communities.

Another weary traveller. My daughter was so tired from the
plane that she wouldn’t wake for a feeding (years ago now).

For me, this post was prompted when I spotted Ignacio Palomo’s Global Young Academy sticker, “Sleep Is for the Plane Ride Home”. (Ignacio was using it only to show his appreciation of GYA, not his support for the attitude it represents.) I love the GYA, and my colleague and friend who coined and popularized this phrase, meaning that one shouldn’t waste time sleeping while at GYA meetings. What’s great about the phrase is how it succinctly captures a strong commitment to the organization and GYA friends.

On this 21-hour journey to Brisbane (which started at 6pm),
I got 20 minutes of shut-eye while my 1-year old slept on my
chest. I’d just as soon boast about that as I would boast about
driving 140 km/h. (It’s just as much of a social burden given
that fatigue is a leading cause of motor accidents.)

But now that it’s on organizational stickers, let’s also acknowledge its dark side: the slogan celebrates habits that compromise our health. And it sends the signal that those who don’t want to do that (who want to get a good night’s sleep) don’t belong.

As I said, I cherish my GYA colleagues, but I didn’t want to show it by staying up until 3 AM. I had too much else going on, and I didn’t want to return to my family fried or sick because I worked myself into the ground. Plus, I'm a better person when I have good sleep: more patient, more generous, less self-absorbed.

It’s hard enough getting a good night sleep without that kind of social pressure (witness exhibit D, left).