Ecology. The biodiversity and ecosystem services science-policy interface.

I n recognition of our inability to halt damaging ecosystem change (1– 4), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was asked in December 2010 to convene a meeting " to determine modalities and institutional arrangements " of a new assessment body, akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to track causes and consequences of anthropogenic ecosystem change (5). The " blueprint " for this body, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), lies in recommendations of an intergovernmental conference held in the Republic of Korea in June 2010: the Busan outcome (6). But it is a blueprint for governance rather than science. Using the experience from past assessments of global biodiversity and ecosystem services change (1, 7, 8) and from the IPCC (9– 11), we ask what the policy-oriented charges in the Busan outcome imply for the science of the assessment process. Although previous global-change assessments required policy relevance, we argue that the policy orientation and support role of IPBES goes further. For example, rather than investigating consequences of specifi c policies identifi ed by a governing body, most previous assessments were constructed around scenarios devised by scientists. The Busan outcome imposes a greater obligation on the IPBES to support specifi c policies, with implications for both the way the governing body gives charges to scientists and the way scientists carry out their work. We focus on four functions identifi ed in the Busan outcome: (a) " identify and prioritize key scientific information needed for policymakers at appropriate scales, " (b) " perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services and their interlinkages, which should include comprehensive global, regional, and, as necessary, sub-regional assessments and thematic issues at appropriate scales and new topics identified by science, " (c) " support policy formulation and implementation, " and (d) " prioritize key capacity-building needs to improve the science-policy interface…. " Three broad implications emerge: (i) The governing body of IPBES, the plenary, should ask for assessment of consequences of specifi c policies and programs at well-defi ned geographical scales. (ii) Projections of changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services should take the form of conditional predictions of the consequences of these policies and programs. And (iii), capacity-building efforts should enhance skills needed for policy-oriented assessment within IPBES and should catalyze external funding for underpinning science and science-based policy development. A critical lesson from the Global …