Lecture series in Ecology and Environmental Research SS 2014

The science-policy-interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services - national to global challenges

The last ten years have seen some major development in the concepts and implementation of interface approaches between science, policy and society. Besides the strong discussions about climate change and the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these developments have focused a lot on the area of biodiversity and ecosystem services, with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 being a main trigger, and the study on The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB) furthering the debate of economic arguments for maintaining biodiversity (2008-2010).

Since then, the debate about safeguarding biodiversity and maintaining the provision of ecosystem services has seen major steps with the adoption of the 2020 biodiversity targets on the Convention on Biology Diversity and the European Union, and last not least, the establishment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which started its first work programme in 2014.

At the same time, the national and the European level have also seen developments at the science-policy-interface, and the scientific work to better understand the challenges of interface processes have led to major insights in how such interfaces should be designed and which functions they can, and cannot, serve.

The talk will bridge these insights from different perspectives, trying to first outline the challenges at the interface, with a specific focus on biodiversity and ecosystem services issues, from a scientific perspective, and then discuss the current developments from the national to the global level. The talk will be illustrated by recent examples from different levels (national, European, global) and highlight the potential of scientists and future professionals to get involved into interface processes.

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Invited by Birgit Thies, BayCEER,  within the Global Change Ecology Graduate Program

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