The Fifth Science Policy Forum for Biodiversity and The Eighth International Conference on Sustainability Science, COP15
IUBS Sessions, quick links
Biodiversity-Inclusive One health: Future solutions, learning from experience
Valuing, measuring and reporting on ecosystem services
What capacity building digital sequence information can offer
Sustainability & food systems/ agriculture: Scaling-up and measuring sustainability
Report of the 5th Science Forum
11 December 2022, Montréal, Canada
Valuing, measuring and reporting on ecosystem services
Organizers: IUBS, IPBES-IFI
Introduction:
In order to halt biodiversity decline, careful measurement and reporting of biodiversity data is necessary to evaluate progress. Building on the release of the IPBES report, this roundtable session will discuss how likely it is that countries will have the capacity to integrate valuation, develop assessments to measure ecosystem services and/or natural capital at national levels, and report the findings of those reports.
This session will also discuss, in line with Target 14, how to value ecosystem services for planning purposes and with a view to different jurisdictions, economic perspectives and cultural contexts. Valuing ecosystem services at all levels of society will be key to achieving the required transformative changes in biodiversity; thus, having affordable and appropriate tools will be crucial to achieve goals and targets within the Global Biodiversity Framework.
Speakers:
Ms. Suneetha Subramanian, United Nations University
Mr. Marcel Kok, PBL, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agence
Mr. Osamu Saito, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) & Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), University of Tokyo, Japan
Ms. Alice Hughes, University of Hong Kong
Mr. Zsolt Molnár, Center for Ecological Research, Hungary
Ms. Isimemen Osemwegie, Capacity Development for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Experts in West, Central & East Africa (CABES)
Ms. Theresa Mundita L. Lim, Executive Director, ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity
Moderator: Ana María Hernández IPBES chair
Video of 11 December 2022
Key messages from the session
Transformative change to sustainability requires accounting for the diversity of nature’s values. Achieving sustainable and just futures require institutions that enable a recognition and integration of the diverse values of nature and nature’s contributions to people.
- Institutions influence which values become socially legitimized and which ones are excluded from decision-making.
- Reforming existing institutions and creating new ones can improve political, economic and social decision-making, mainstreaming the consideration of nature’s diverse values and leading to better outcomes for people and nature.
- Recognizing and respecting the worldviews, values and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities and the institutions that support their rights, territories or interests and allow policies to be more inclusive of how different people live, relate to and value nature, which also translates into better outcomes for people and nature.
- Several uses and users of resources who hold different values- some of which may be intrinsic (valuing nature for itself), instrumental (valuing for what it provides as goods and services and various functions) or relational, depending on purpose of valuation and stage of policy decision cycle, different types of valuation would be required (to inform, engage, decide, etc).
- It is necessary that contexts and stakeholders’ priorities be taken into account – this would require integrating or bridging across different values
- Valuing, monitoring and reporting are culturally specific, including biases in the reporter themselves.
- Valuation methods can be quantitative, qualitative and integrative in nature -and values and valuation methodologies of IPLCs have also a place.
- There is an interface between Western science and traditional knowledge, as well as the interface of Western science and policy, and decision-making.
- For instance, there are actually hundreds of millions of people monitoring nature within local communities using their own knowledge systems. Additionally, social scientists often work with IPLCs but don’t fully recognize the indigenous and local knowledge, as very few studies go into the biological specifics; transdisciplinary studies will be very important.
Macroeconomic decisions can also be made in a sustainability aligned manner if we can influence the thinking of relevant sectors such as the finance sector. An example given from a central bank /financial institution, shows that it is important to understand their logic, which follows an analysis of reputation, transition and physical risks, for safeguarding the financial stability of a country, to contribute to sustainable prosperity.