Science Forum (Opening Session), UN Convention on Biodiversity – COP 17

And it is my honor to now start with, sorry, we need to make sure the slides work. Yes, with introducing the panel, we'll begin with Her Excellency, Jana Andriasian. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Armenia. And we are deeply grateful to Armenia for hosting COP and advancing international cooperation. Yeah, it is a real pleasure to have you here. And I would like to invite you to deliver your opening remarks.

Thank you so much, dear colleagues, dear friends. I'll speak in Armenian, so you have this. Okay. So, thank you. Okay.

Distinguished colleagues, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to welcome you in Yerevan for the 7th Science Policy Forum for Biodiversity and the the 10th International Conference on Sustainability Science, held as part of COP17. I should say that the firm celebrates its 20th anniversary and reminds us of a fundamental principle.

You don't hear me? So that's interesting. Don't you hear on the English channel? You have to turn to the English channel in order to hear English interpretation. Tune to English channel to hear English interpretation. Checking. Checking. That's correct. You have to tune to the right channel in order to hear us. Do you hear the English channel? Checking one, two, three. Checking one, two, three. Do you hear English now? Make it quiet. Do you hear on the English channel? Make one, two, three. So, one, two, three, four, do you hear us? Someone has put the headphones near the turned on microphone. I hear myself in echo. Do you hear now? Do you hear now? Ladies and gentlemen, do you hear the English interpreter now? We need to translate that into Armenian, nevertheless.

Pleasure to welcome you all in Yerevan in the frames of COP17 for this very important forum and international conference regarding the biodiversity science and policy. forum and for us this forum that in this year is important event of 20th anniversary. This reminds of very important principle that to preserve nature, first of all, we need to know and learn about nature and scientific knowledge should be the basis for our decisions and concrete steps towards preservation of nature. And for us, it's really important agenda for our country and all the reforms in the sector of science and research are based on this very important agenda. So I'd like to inform you that last year we have adopted new law on higher education and science, which provides new basis for the development of higher education and research and integration of these two sectors. And this year we have adopted a new strategy on development of science. And according to the strategy on the science, we have 12 priority areas. And among those 12 priority areas, we have those kind of areas such as environmental studies, agricultural studies, and also studies on Earth, which can serve a very important basis for the solving of the questions that we, challenges that we have in these sectors. And I'd like also to mention that these are not only something written on the paper, but the government of Armenia is putting huge effort to provide investment for the sector and to provide opportunities for our researchers to work on these very important directions. And I'd like to inform that last year, we provide more than 40 billion drams for the science and research. which is about three times higher than seven years ago. So we have gradual increase of the salaries of our researchers up to 300%. And it provides opportunity also for young researchers to join the sector and to implement new projects and new research, which would provide new opportunities also for the policy making and decision making processes. Another very important area for us to foster the development of science is providing also contemporary equipment for the research. And for the last five years, we have provided 20 billion dram. And we have been implementing more than 20 grant programs in the sector, which provides opportunities for our researchers, but not only for Armenian researchers and for us it's really important to connect Armenian researchers with their colleagues from abroad and we have specific Grant projects in this regard and I'd like to inform that uh during the last years we have more than 40 researchers from different countries that come to Armenia to implement this joint research with our researchers. And another 60 researchers have been working distantly with our researchers and providing new opportunities for cooperation. Another very important project have been implemented by our government is creating supercomputer center, a center for artificial intelligence at the Yerevan State University, which provides new opportunities for new capacities that could serve also for the environmental studies and modeling also the processes regarding climate change. And I'm very happy to see that the center is working very actively and we have a lot of cooperation and new partnerships started there. But specifically talking about the important agenda of biodiversity, I would like to mention that these specific thematic studies have their role and place in the overall grant system in our sector. And for example, I would like to mention some of them. For example, we have different projects under the European Union, European Green Convention. And we have providing also some joint research assistance, for example, such as Armenian-Germany joint research. And environmental studies are a specific part of those projects. We also, uh, give… very much importance to include all those principles in the education sector. For example, in the frames of Erasmus+ T-Green project, we have been developing master programs that could foster green economy and technologies. Another important partnership for us is GLOBE International Program with the assistance of NASA, and in the frames of this program, our kids from schools have opportunity to be engaged in this kind of studies from the early years of their schooling. Of course, for us it's really important to understand how these achievements could be connected with the practical policies. For example, such measures as global atlas of ecosystems could be really important directions, and we are very willing to foster and to be part of it and to use our scientific potential and data to assist this joint agenda. Very important part of our government program is Academic City project. This project is a big one and it requires to have a new environment for our universities and scientific organizations. And Academic City would be established as a new campus based totally on green approach, starting from the water resources to biodiversity. and it's really important part of the work that we are doing, not only talking, but also implementing and integrating all those approaches in our current projects and policies. So for us, it's really important that when we are talking about biodiversity, when we are talking about preserving nature, to have education and research systems that serve this agenda, and to have research that could assist us to recognize and to evaluate the changes that are happening in the nature, and to have results of the research that could be basis for the decisions that we are making, and to develop some behavior that could bring our citizens to be more responsible for the nature and for the society. And I hope that during this forum, we'll have additional opportunities to discuss and to have concrete recommendations. And from the Armenian side, we are very committed to learn about those recommendations and to apply those recommendations further, both in our education and also in our research, assisting this very important agenda that United today in Yerevan and I hope will continue to unite us for further our actions and for further our processes. Thank you very much and once again welcome to Armenia. We are very glad to have you here and we are very glad to host this concrete forum and specific event. Thank you.

Thank you, Your Excellency. We deeply appreciate your presence here. Now, our next speaker is Mrs. Astrid Schomaker, who leads the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity at this very critical time from translating global biodiversity commitments into meaningful action. Madam Executive Secretary, you have the floor.

Thank you. Good morning, colleagues, your excellencies. Pleasure to be with you. Thank you for coming on a Saturday morning and looking like you're willing to work and to engage. So I'm really, really happy to be able to welcome you on behalf of the Convention's Secretariat of the Seventh Science Policy forum, and I would also like to thank the co-organizers for working with us to organize it. We often say that science is the lifeblood of our Convention, and I think when we say it, we mean it. You know, in our Convention, we took a big step forward with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework four years ago. This framework would not have been adopted in its scope, breadth, and with a level of ambition had it not been for strong science underpinning the discussion, including, of course, the IPBES global assessment that came just before. So without science, we don't move forward. And we are very happy to have this space here as a place where party delegates and scientists can come and exchange how evidence-based action should look like and how we can take it forward. And obviously, this is another super timely moment. So I already said that the framework itself was underpinned by science. As you know, we're here at COP17 to undertake our first global review of how far we have come in the implementation of the framework. But it's not just to take stock of it, but to chart these pathways forward for acceleration. And there, again, we need science to be at the table and present to push us forward and to steer this pathway in the right direction. So we somehow hope that your discussions are not just wrapped around the negotiations, but support the negotiations and inspire the negotiations, of course. Now, I think most of you will know that the State of Biodiversity Action, so that is the UN report on how far we have come in implementation, has shown that there is a lot of progress in engagement with the framework, but it is also unequivocal that this progress is not happening at the required pace or scale, and that significant gaps remain, particularly in relation to targets concerning the economic system and its impacts on biodiversity. And the report is also clear that if we want to reach the 2030 targets, it is still feasible, but it requires the search of action and further delays really have in a way costs. Also that we need transformative change to move forward. Again, we have scientific reports again from IPBES. We have a whole separate discussion 100 meters from here on transformative change for two days. And how can we address the drivers of biodiversity loss more than we have before and redirect action and attention to these upstream factors that create the downstream impacts on which we're very often focusing in our convention and in other conventions. But for that, we have to close remaining knowledge gaps. And for that, again, forums like this are so important. And obviously, this will not happen overnight, and we do not yet have all the right answers, but we have a lot of answers. and you have a lot of answers, and we know a lot of things, and we have a lot of tools. So we know how we can move that discussion forward. But it is really through conversation, bringing scientists and government representatives together, that we can build this foundation for collaboration, which will hopefully enable us to overcome those challenges and bridge the gaps. And it is great to see that this year the forum is looking at how scientific knowledge can support integrated action across biodiversity, climate, land, food, water, health, because of course it is this integrated action that is not only crucial, but also allows us to have more than one win. So we always have to justify our actions, so there are win, win, win, wins if we get it right. And of course, if we want to have multiple wins, again, looking upstream will make that a lot easier. So to the fact that so many of you are already here on a Saturday morning, they're still walking in, I think that bodes well for this forum, and of course, for the outcomes of the conference. One piece of news also last night, we already adopted an action plan on education, biodiversity education. So that is also a very important step forward for your work. So I wish you a productive forum. I look forward to seeing the outcomes. I won't witness them because I have to go to a different meeting now, but I want to close by wishing all of us a happy United Nations Day. It's the 81st anniversary of the United Nations. today. And let's prove once again that by bringing many brains together, the sum of your brains is larger than each of your individual brains, and that by leveraging this together, we can make a difference and we will make a difference. So happy UN Day and good deliberations. And thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Madam Executive Secretary. I know you have a very busy schedule. Really appreciate that you could make it. It is now my pleasure to hand it over to Professor Renee Borges, President of the International Union for Biological Sciences, who has been a founding member since the establishment of the Science Forum 20 years ago. Professor Borges, please change the slide. Yes, you have the floor.

Okay, while the slides are being changed. Welcome, I'm Renee Borges, president of the International Union of Biological Sciences. And today, IUBS along with CBD celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Science Forum. Yes, so if you, this is a quick slide which shows you all the various places that we have had the Science Forum starting with 2006 in Curitiba in Brazil and today in Yerevan in Armenia. So the Science Forum has traveled around the world and we hope we've been able to contribute in a significant way to bringing science and policy together. Could I have the next one? Right. Today we actually would like to dedicate the Science Forum to a very eminent member of the IPES and the Nexus and the Climate Change Report community. This was Kofi Akamany, who was elected IUBS Secretary General on the 13th of June this year, but very sadly passed away on the 19th of September 2026. We wish to dedicate this science forum to Kofi and we have a little QR code over there. So if anybody who knew Kofi and would like to record some memories, some a message to Kofi's family, please use the QR code and do so. We will also have a book outside which way you can write you know, something that you would like. Uh in respect of Kofi's memory, may I just request all of you to stand for a minute of silence, please. Thank you. So Kofi would have been here and he would have been part of the next session, which is the next session that we will be getting to after we are done with our opening session. So because we are running late, I won't take up any more time. And thank you all for being here and contributing to the Science Forum.

Thank you so much, Renee. Our next speaker works at the intersection of sustainability, science, and international research collaboration at the University of Tokyo and Future Earth, where he helps to strengthen connections between science and society to address global challenge. Please welcome Dr. Gilles Huet. The floor is yours.

Your Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, fellow organizers, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. It's a really great pleasure to be here in Yerevan, Armenia, on behalf of the University of Tokyo and as a co-organizer of the Seventh Science Policy Forum for Biodiversity. Let me truly begin with thanking the Armenian presidency, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and all our partners that are bringing us together on this important moment for global biodiversity. Over the last two decades, scientific knowledge of biodiversity and its connections to climate, food systems, water and human health has advanced considerably. We now have a stronger understanding of both the challenges we face and the solutions available to us. However, we need to upscale operationalization through policy and practice. We must honestly look at what's working, where implementation is failing short, and what needs to change. Science has a critical role to play, but evidence alone does not make or deliver transformation. We need stronger connections between research, policymaking, practice, and greater collaboration across sectors and meaningful engagement with Indigenous and local communities, youth and other knowledge holders. As one example, Japan hosted the second Global Nature Positive Summit in July this year, mobilizing discussions with the business sector to achieve the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework. Hence, also our strong support for the Science Policy Forum today. At the University of Tokyo, we recognize that biodiversity challenges are deeply interconnected to climate change, land use, food and water security, human health, and social resilience together. And nexus approaches can help us identify synergies, understandings of trade-offs, and co-develop more integrated responses. Importantly, these connections matter not only in long-term sustainability planning, but also in times of crisis. For example, session 12 tomorrow on nature positive recovery, building resilience from disaster and conflict, will explore how nature-based solutions, biodiversity conservation, and community-led initiatives can support recovery while strengthening social cohesion and resilience. It is one example of how scientific knowledge can inform practical action in complex real-world settings. Over the next two days, I hope this forum will provide a space for open exchange, constructive debates, and learning from both successes and failures. Let us identify not only the knowledge and the tools we need, but also the institutional, financial, and governance conditions that enable their effective use. Biodiversity loss, we are understanding very well, but it's time to work together to reverse it. Thank you very much and I wish you a productive and inspiring forum.

Thank you so much. Our next speaker leads the Humboldt Institute in Colombia, a key partner in bridging science, policy and practice. It's my pleasure to turn it over to Dr. Hernando Garcia Martinez, Director General of the Humboldt Institute.

Thank you. I'm going to speak in my own language. Muy buenos dias a todos y todas. Quiero extender a su excelencia, Sana Andreyan, ministra de educacion, ciencia, cultura y deporte de la Republica de Armenia, a nuestra querida.

Dear colleagues, for me, The conference. I am Hernando Garcia Martinez. I am the Minister of Technological Processes. I would like to welcome on behalf of all the departments from Colombia. This is, we have great biodiversity in our country, specifically when we talk about different varieties. Dear colleagues from the science community, policymakers, representatives of indigenous people, dear friends, As Director General of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute and co-chair of the Consortium of Scientific Partners, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, I would like to welcome you to this platform. I would like to mention that public policy is really crucial. Dialogue between science and policy must be a two-way process. Science helps us understand changes, uncertainties, and their consequences, while policymakers bring an understanding of social, institutional, and territorial realities. When these two spheres are connected from the earliest stage, including during the negotiation of decisions, policies become better informed by evidence and more responsive to realities on the ground. Policy Forum requires the active presence of policymakers and decision makers engaging directly with the scientific community, those negotiating decision texts, and those responsible for implementing these decisions in the countries. Their participation is essential to ensuring that scientific evidence informs decisions from the outset. We are pleased that this forum is moving in a direction that previous editions have identified as necessary, maintaining a sustained dialogue between science and policy. The participation of policymakers and decision makers brings this dialogue to the territorial level. Biodiversity commitments are translated into action through decisions concerning land and water use, livelihoods, development, and public investment. This is fundamental at national, subnational, and local levels. We are meeting in turbulent times when scientific evidence is being questioned and immediate pressures can narrow our perspective. It is precisely at such times that we must listen to science. We need sound scientific advice to assess risks, look beyond immediate pressures, and ground policy decisions in the best available knowledge. In doing so, we must remember that Western science must always engage in dialogue with traditional knowledge systems. For this reason, I would like to emphasize that countries can only take knowledge-based action when they have access to the technical expertise and support their needs. We call for stronger cooperation and sustained support for science to contribute to better policy making. The subregional technical and scientific cooperation support centers offer significant potential in this regard. By connecting countries' needs with specialized expertise tools, data and training, the centers can strengthen peer-to-peer learning, knowledge transfer and implementation across the region, contributing to the achievement of the goals and targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework. The value of this forum will be measured by the partnership we carry forward into implementation. I I hope this forum will help us listen to one another across disciplines, institutions, and levels of government and drive forward fair and effective action for the diversity and people. I look forward to the discussions that will take place today, which will strengthen our main commitments for implementation.

Muchas gracias, Senor Director. It is now my pleasure to introduce Dr. Javier Mateo Vega, Assistant Undersecretary of Research Programs and Partnerships at the Smithsonian Institution, who helps lead the Smithsonian's effort to strengthen research partnerships and connect scientific expertise with global priorities. Mr. Vega, you have the floor.

Thanks so much, Carlos.

So allow me to start by extending a very special thanks After her Excellency Sana Andreyan, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia, I think I speak on behalf of everyone in this room in acknowledging the tremendous job that Armenia has done in delivering this COP, this very consequential COP. I'd also like to extend a warm welcome and thanks to my colleagues from the Convention of Biological Diversity, the International Union of Biological Sciences, the University of Tokyo, UNESCO, and of course, the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Research Research Institute. It's wonderful to be here with all of you, and it's wonderful to bring both our scientific and policy communities together at this important moment. As my colleagues have mentioned, the Consortium of Scientific Partners on Biodiversity was established in 2006, 20 years ago, as a collaborative partnership between the CBD and leading scientific institutions from around the world to help support implementation of the convention. Our institutions not only generate and share knowledge, but also ensure that scientific evidence is accessible, relevant, and effectively used to inform decisions and support action. The Smithsonian Institution and fellow CSP members have a longstanding commitment to advancing biodiversity science through research, scientific collections, monitoring, education, and international collaboration. Achieving the global biodiversity goals requires placing science at the center of implementation, not only as a source of evidence, but also as a foundation for informed decision making, investment, and importantly, accountability. As countries assess collective progress towards the 2030 targets, robust scientific evidence, biodiversity data, monitoring and assessments are essential to understanding progress, identifying gaps, and determining where action is most urgently needed. The challenge is not simply to produce more knowledge, but to ensure that the knowledge and expertise already available are more effectively connected to policy, to practice, and to action. Beyond the CBD, we must also continue to elevate biodiversity science across the broader global policy agenda, recognizing the fundamental connections between biodiversity, climate change, human health, food and water security, and sustainable development. And this requires sustained engagement between scientific institutions, policymakers, practitioners, and importantly, Indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as greater investment in scientific cooperation and capacity development across countries and regions. The Science Policy Forum provides an important opportunity to strengthen these connections, identify practical opportunities for collaboration, and consider how scientific institutions can contribute more effectively to countries' priorities. My fellow panelists have already highlighted many other key points, so I would like to simply close by reaffirming the Smithsonian Institution's commitment to working with the CBD, with CSP members, and the broader scientific community to strengthen the role of science, foster international collaboration, and accelerate progress towards our shared biodiversity goals. We look forward to continuing this important work together. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Our final opening speaker is Dr. Antonio Abreu, Director of Ecological and Earth Science at UNESCO and Secretary of the Man and the Biosphere Program. He works to advance international scientific cooperation to address environmental challenges. Dr. Abreu, you have the floor.

Thank you. Good morning, Excellency, Madam Minister. Distinguished scientists and experts, representatives of parties and partners of the forum, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends, friends is a nice word nowadays. It is really a great pleasure to take part in the opening of this forum. My thanks to the IUBS the CBD secretariat and all partners for convening us and to Armenia, of course, for its warm hospitality. I was just sharing a few minutes ago that myself and some colleagues, and I believe that everybody in the room, out of the COP, we are feeling at home. The COP is a special place, but outside we feel at home, and this is really very important to stress. As it was said here, 20 years after the first forum, our mission is a little bit more urgent than ever to translate scientific knowledge into decisions that protect life on Earth. We are halfway to the 2030 deadline of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. And as we heard this morning here, the first global review shows some progress, it also delivers a stark message. We are not yet on track. Let's be clear. We know the scale of the challenge. So what matters now, maybe it's to accelerate action. Let me offer you from UNESCO's perspective three priorities. First, let evidence guide action. This year, UNESCO published the first assessment of its more than 2,000 biosphere reserves, world heritage sites, and global geoparks. Considered all these more than 2,200 sites as a single global network, just one network. Across these sites, we figured from scientific evidence, all available and validated data indicates that monitored wildlife populations have remained stable

On average, even if populations worldwide have fallen by nearly 70%. So basically we compared how biodiversity conservation evolved in UNESCO sites when compared with the traditional protected areas. And we see that conservation is more stable on these sites. And we believe that there is one of the things that we believe that is contributing to this is because these sites have people too, 900 million people living on these sites. Most of the protected, traditional protected area for more than one century, they were separating people from nature. So maybe it's a question that us scientists need to figure out. These places are then living laboratories. We must learn from them, replicate what works, forget what doesn't work and scale up proven solutions because there are solutions also. Second, let's make knowledge accessible to all. Biodiversity crosses borders. Our data and cooperation must do the same. We are still separated. Through the biosphere reserves and geoparks resource hub, the ocean biodiversity information system, and the global ocean Observing System and its recommendation on open science, UNESCO helps countries to share long-term evidence and strengthen monitoring without imposing unnecessary reporting burdens. That is also something that sometimes we tend to bring complications. Scientific evidence is richer when it embraces diverse ways of knowing, as it was mentioned here, indigenous and traditional knowledge, rooted in generations of observation. They offer indispensable insights, especially where data are scarce. It must have a meaningful place in assessments and decisions. Third, connect science across disciplines and with policy. UNESCO recently merged the two science sectors, natural sciences and human and social sciences now, it's just one sector. It's a quite challenging moment that we are living, but enjoying that merge. Biodiversity, climate, water, food and health are inseparable, as the IPBES Nexus Assessment makes very clear. Addressing them together can multiply the impact of scarce resources. This means building stronger links among disciplines, knowledge systems and decision makers. So COP17, that's why we are here, must move us from commitments to implementation. This forum has an opportunity to shape that shift by providing clear, actionable, scientific messages for the negotiations here in Yerevan. It's not for tomorrow, it's today. UNESCO stands ready to contribute through its Man and the Biosphere Program, World Heritage Sites, and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and global scientific networks, UNESCO Chairs, Category 2 Centers. Let's then make knowledge count where it matters most, in action. I wish you a productive forum and looking forward to continue this journey together. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Dr. Abreu. On behalf of all the organization partners, thank you to all our distinguished speakers and participants. We know many of you have other urgent commitments, and we will take a five-minute break if anyone has to leave, to release those of you who have to move to the next event, and then we will start with the keynote presentations. Thank you again, and we look forward to two days of constructive dialogue, exchange, and collaboration. One minute break, sorry. Thank you so much.

Thank you, it was a pleasure.

Okay, we are going to have a longer break later. I'm sorry, we have to continue with the program in 15 seconds. So please, if everyone could take their seats again, we just wanted to release the minister because she has to go to another event. on one of the chairs. Oh. And somebody found a phone on the floor. If anyone is missing their phone, it's over here. But we are going to continue. Please, everybody, please take your seats. Hi, Renu. We are now moving to the keynote presentations. We will have two presentations from two distinguished experts. Our first keynote speaker is Gillian Campbell from the CBD Secretariat. She's a senior advisor at the Office of the Executive Secretary, and she will set the stage for our discussions by reflecting on the priorities of COP17, the collective review of progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and the objectives and expected outcomes of the forum. Gillian, you have the floor.

Thank you. And I do have some slides which I have sent, so hopefully we can go through those. So I'm mostly going to talk about the global report, which is sort of the centerpiece for this particular COP and how this relates to this form. So as you are aware, I mean, at this COP, where we are and how do we address the gaps is really what the COP is about. And I think this is not my first slide. Let me make sure I sent you the right ones. I could put it in the chat. Sorry. Sorry about that. Let me. Maybe I could just connect. It's this one. Okay, I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna share it again. I'm sorry about that. Okay, so I'll just continue talking anyway. So What I was going to do this morning is to walk you through what the global report says about where we are and especially the messages related to science and a few of my reflections on how I think that this form can fill some of the gaps and then also describe how this links with the COP. So as I'll start maybe there. The way that the system was designed is that the global report tells us where we are. The global review, which is the decision that's being made by the parties, is how do you fill the gaps that you're seeing in the global report? Similarly to that, not all of the gaps can be filled by COP decision making. So what I wanted to focus on today, and when I look at the agenda that you have, is where are the gaps in terms of how the science policy interface is working in where could we as a scientific consortium fill some of these gaps? And so hopefully we can start going through the progress. But basically, the way that the system works in terms of decision making is you have countries who are developing their national plans, you have countries that develop their national reports, then that information feeds into the global process where we aggregate it up and say what's happening at the national level. And then at the same time, you have global level information that is coming from assessments such as IPBES. And you have the global decision-making process, which of course then feeds back into the national systems. And in the national reports, when I analyze them, what's clear to me is there are places where this system is breaking down. There is a lack of information flowing between the national systems and the global system and vice versa, and there's a lack of information flow between what's available from the scientific community at both levels and what's happening in both the national and the global policy spheres. And so I think that forums such as this one are particularly important because this gives us an opportunity to be here where the policy makers are making these decisions and to try to say, how could we at least better bridge these gaps between science and policy? So if you go to my next slide, I think I've been describing this. sort of. So this is the image from the global report on how we see the system. And as you can see, it is a little bit complicated and disconnected because you have the national monitoring systems, which are government information that flows into the national reports, and those may or may not be connected to national scientific institutions or other institutions during research or even other ministries. And then you also have a difficult linkage between the types of monitoring that's happening at the global level, including with Earth observation and national monitoring. So if you go to the next slide, I'm now going to maybe continue to go to the next one. Yeah. To tell you sort of the logic behind the global report and why this information is so important. So when the framework was adopted in 2022, every party agreed to make their national biodiversity strategy and action plan and their national targets based on the best available science and information. So the national targets that were set by parties represent their ambition to implement the framework. So you have the global ambition, which is the vision of the framework. You have the national ambition or the national aggregate level of the commitments that countries have made to the framework, which is typically less than the ambition of the global. So if you add up all of the national targets, they don't reach the global targets. And then you have the gaps in implementation. And so then science needs to sort of fill in at all of these different levels. If you go to the next slide, you can go to the next slide. Do you want me to take the slides?

I don't know if we can do that.

Okay. Okay. Okay, so if you... Yeah, I can replace this, yeah. Sorry about that. So what we found when we have done this analysis is that there is really strong global engagement, however, the... As I said, the ambition of the national targets doesn't quite line up with the what's described in the global biodiversity framework. And additionally, then there's also these gaps in implementation. And so science can help fill these gaps at both levels. and also help us to detect biodiversity outcomes. Now, it's a little too early, of course, to start talking about detecting biodiversity outcomes or monitoring the goals because you have time lags in terms of when action is taking place and when you would expect to see outcomes in terms of ecosystem restoration or actual expansion of ecosystem extent, for example. So if you were to restore now, which we are measuring the area under restoration, the actual outcome of that restoration would maybe take 10 years and you might still continue to see some decline until that restoration activity really takes into effect. So we didn't go into a lot of detail on biodiversity outcomes, but additionally, it's really hard to measure those biodiversity outcomes because we still don't have consistent data on ecosystem extent across the world. We still have big gaps in terms of species monitoring. And so we both have this challenge of it being too early to detect changes in biodiversity outcomes. And we also have the challenge in terms of we also don't really have the data that's going to allow us to detect these changes. That said, we have tried to at least look at what's happening in terms of biodiversity action. So the state of biodiversity action report is what we've called it, is based on those national level actions. And the targets of the framework are also based on actions, not outcomes. So obviously, area under restoration, this is an action that you're taking with the goal of creating actually restored areas. Or protected areas is also an action that you're taking, you're not protecting just to draw a line on a map, you're protecting with the hope that those ecosystems are then kept intact. And so the goals measure these outcomes that you would be expecting. And so when, but the logic is that you need to have these actions in order to have the outcomes. And then obviously we don't. really, we're not really able to say if those actions are going to result in the outcomes because we're not measuring the outcomes yet in a way that allows us to make that conclusion, which is a little bit of an unfortunate gap in the system. But in terms of the actions, here is what we're seeing as our scorecard of where we stand. Now, if you look at the global report, these are an assessment of one, the scope and the coverage of the national targets, two, the self-reported assessment of progress. So every country was asked how they think that they're faring in terms of implementing their national targets that relate to a specific global target. Three, there was indicator reporting, which was for the first time. But again, many of these indicators are more based on actions like measuring the protected areas, of course, is measuring and action. And there are some measuring of ecosystem extent, but those indicators are more focused on the goals or the red list of ecosystem is in here, but it is more of a goal level indicator. And then you have this fourth one, which relates to data availability. I would say that just in case you're looking at this scorecard, I want to be very transparent because I think it's, I've seen in the news lately some misquoting of what this represents. It does not, the colors don't really represent if you're on track or off track in terms of implementing the framework. The colors are a, for each of these different categories, red means that it's worse than the other targets in that category, and green means that it's better than the other targets in that category. So we took the highest level of the achievement and the lowest level of achievement, and we just created a three-colored scale between those two points, if that makes any sense. So for example, in terms of the self-reported assessment of progress, the highest self-reported assessment of progress, so it's on a four-point Likert scale, which the the top one being related to either achieved or on track to achieve the target by 2030 and that the highest self-reported assessment of progress was 50% for the national targets aligned with the global target. So for target two, for example, where it is a green on the number two, that actually represents that half of countries said that they were on track. And so then the reds for that same category would be something closer to the lower levels of self-assessment of progress, which was in the 20s, in like 20% of parties, just to give you an idea of the differences. And if you look at this report later. I don't usually go into this level of detail, but because I know you are a scientific group, I want to make it very clear exactly what's being displayed, because I think it's easy for, this is another issue, of course, that we have in terms of the link between science and policy, is it takes a lot for me to explain what this scorecard represents, and if I do this with a policymaker, I've already lost them, and then they just say, "Okay, well, red is bad." So it's a little bit complicated, isn't it? And so here is also then what another thing that we've done is I keep mentioning how are we looking at these biodiversity outcomes? So it is too early for, from my perspective, to be looking at the biodiversity outcomes. And I think this is a message in the global report. But what we've done here is we ask the parties in their national reports how the targets relate to the outcomes. And so this is a Sankey of those relationships. And so what it means from my perspective is, and this is very similar to some of the work that was done before the framework, is that the relationships between the targets and the goals are really complex, and most targets are contributing to more than one goal, and the goals are benefiting from lots of targets. So this re-emphasizes that you really do need to take action across all of the targets because they're all linked to multiple goals. And so if we're not on track for those targets, it's logical that we're probably not going to be on track for the goals. But of course, as I said, we can't measure those in a way that would allow us to make that determination. So then there's six key messages in the report, which I've already really talked about the scope and the coverage and the gaps in terms of implementation, which we are seeing across the framework. There's also In looking at the analysis of the national reports and the NBSAPs and the targets, there are gaps in means of implementation with most parties reflecting that they don't have the means of implementation available to achieve their target. There's gaps with whole government and whole of society approaches. There's very little description of how different actors are involved in implementing the framework, which is included in the national reports. And so think these are some of the gaps that are definitely being recognized in the COP, and there's a number of different paragraphs in the decision on the global review aimed at addressing some of these gaps, and there's other decisions here at COP that are also aimed towards addressing some of these gaps. And so this has then provided the information base across the decision making at COP. So then I wanted to quickly, before I conclude, go into what are the messages in terms of, sorry, in terms of data, I don't know if I can get it back. Yeah, sorry. Which is that the monitoring systems that we have for the targets that are related more to biodiversity are better intact. So the targets one, two, three, and four, these are the ones that relate to spatial planning, restoration, protection, and species. And 10 relates to agriculture. So many countries are doing something and reporting on these, but then you see much weaker reporting of quantitative information across the framework. So ecosystem services or pollution are particular areas that are underreported. Many, many countries say that they're making improvements to their national monitoring systems. There's not so much evidence of information flow between, as I said, between the scientific community and the national reporting. And many of the national reports did not use the global data that was available. So for some of the targets, including target three as an example, where there is the world database on protected areas, this was typically not used by parties in their national reports. They instead sent their own national information on protected areas. And so I think there's also this gap because I know that people at the national level are reporting to that database, but yet When it came to the national reporting, they would prefer to report to us as opposed to reusing the global data, which was in a different database, which I think is an interesting thing that happened in this report. And so it comes back to the fact that throughout the process and throughout the reporting, it's very clear that this national level ownership of the information is critical if you're going to get it used in the policy sphere, and then obviously picked up in the information that flows through to us. And so I wanted to conclude by saying at the end of all of this, at the end of the process of drafting the report, and this is really the takeaways from the report drafting more than anything else, this is what I came away with in terms of the link between science and policy, and one is that We need integrated national information. I've mentioned this a number of times that government reporting often is not really benefiting from integrating scientific information, traditional knowledge, and other knowledge systems. Obviously, I think there's goodwill. It's just, you know, coordination is often difficult. There's also disconnects in global policy and science. So the interlinkages between this kind of work that we're doing on the global report, other scientific assessments, including the work of IPBES, it's complicated and a little bit not clear how we pull these things together in order to feed into the decision making. And so we have all this amazing resources in terms of science, But how do we make sure that when we are making the decisions that we're making here today, that things come together? And I think that the global review decision itself is an example. As I said, this global report is mostly based on the national reports. We did not have the time when we were drafting the global report to do a full scientific literature review. Or we did a very... superficial mapping of what was in the IPBES assessments. We weren't able to go into detail. And so then better using that information to identify some of the gaps that we're seeing is something that is still a little bit fuzzy. How do we really make sure that this flows into the decision making? This is something that I think needs to be continued to be thought about. Then there's also this gap in terms of meeting the demand for science. So when we've done this global report, we find all these different data gaps, which have been described and you can see a snapshot of in this picture that I just showed. And again, in every IPBES assessment that I have read, so I think all of the IPBES assessments, at the end of the chapter, at the end of the SBM even, it talks about where the information gaps are. And so every of us assessment says, here's the list of what we still don't know. You know, we have done our best on this methodological assessment, for example, but here's the information gaps. But so we have these very impressive list of what we need to know from the report, from the different assessments. We say, here's the what we still need to know if we're going to do better science and then finding a way for those needs to. come back into the scientific community to actually help guide research. There's not a strong system for this. And so then the research, most researchers, of course, are wanting their information to be used by policymakers, but there's this gap in terms of what exactly, how do they figure out what the demand is, and how does this flow into the actual research that's happening in universities and in academic institutions? And then last, I think there's also this gap in terms of tailoring. So much of the information that's coming from the scientific community, including journal articles, is not really accessible to policymakers and government. And so how do we make it where there's a better science policy interface so that the research that's being done can be packaged up and understood? And so those were my takeaways. You can disagree with me if you want, but this is where I ended up after working on this report. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mrs. Campbell. Our second keynote speaker is Dr. David David Obura, chair of who will explore how the nexus and transformative change assessments can help guide and measure progress toward the 2030 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Please join me in welcoming Dr. David Obura.

Thank you. Thank you very much. A pleasure to come here and follow Gillian in presenting in the keynotes at the beginning of the session of the Science Forum. I'm not sure when my slides come up. Okay, I'll keep my introduction going then. So it's a pleasure to come. This is the second time I've been invited to do this. I want to really thank the organizers of this for giving IPBEST a chance to come and show our support for the scientific process that underpins the convention and to bring the science community closer to the country needs and the global needs as outlined by Gillian. We're very aware there are many gaps and we try very hard to sort of address those. I also want to acknowledge that actually in the audience there are many IPBES scientists. I'll acknowledge around the room our executive secretary is there L you're suddenly hiding behind somebody so I didn't want to call you out if you had gone out suddenly um is here and what I'll try and do in my presentation because you don't have a lot of time of course is perhaps try and address some of the How we hope that IPBES findings can support the countries in thinking about implementation, of course, is the most important thing because we need tangible progress in meeting the targets of the convention. But then, of course, implementation needs to be supported by decisions. Of course, as all of you are aware, there's a lot of negotiation that happens on the texts that get approved at the end of the COP. And as the chair of IPBES, I'm elated to see how much language from IPBES assessments, so how much findings from science do make it into what is being talked about for the convention, and acknowledging that countries do have different circumstances, do have different perspectives on different issues, and so of course there will be disagreements between them on precisely what wording should be used, but that gives an opportunity to discuss what the science is saying and its relevance to the challenges that all the countries are facing in meeting the objectives of the convention, and of course, improving the quality of life for people in their countries, which all are mandated to do. So what I'll try and do, I've been asked to mention the nexus and the transformative change assessments in introducing this. I'll actually go a little bit more broadly than that across some of our other assessments too. and because I think our assessments do illustrate a narrative that is basically the wisdom of the convention processes and of our own plenary process in thinking through how can science support decision making at the policy level. So there's the overall title. I'll move straight forward to the next slide. As as everybody knows, our most visible outputs are these assessment reports and some workshop reports as well. These are the ones that we have had approved so far. And in looking at the range of topics that we have had in it, that's to see how basically we started in 2012 with a particular set of questions and priority topics. We have tended to approve some quite focused assessment topics, such as on pollination scenarios and models at the beginning of our work. We then had the general thematic assessments of the regional and the first global assessments, which came out in 2018 and 2019. And these really set the stage for identifying what the priority questions are following from that. I'll focus on the broader thematic questions that have emerged and I think from that I'll focus on the values, the nexus, transformative change and the business assessments because I think they complete a package that answers some questions that the first global assessment posed around transformative change and a lot of the discussions around language that we're seeing in the negotiations here are really about the elements of how do we If we are not delivering on our targets and not making enough progress, why is that? What does transformative change mean in succeeding on the high-ambition targets that have been set? As you all know, we have a conceptual framework that we use to organise all our assessments. That was agreed through quite a long, deliberative and consultative process, and it was published in 2015. And I've shown here almost where we got to with the first global assessment from my personal interpretation is that we did had a lot of quantitative work on the state of nature, of course. We also had a lot of quantitative work on nature's contributions to people and the 18 classes that we have identified there and their status, direct drivers, also a lot of quantitative work on that. But it's more complicated working on those inner three boxes. that relate to people in our institutions. And the main point that I want to put at the top there is that with the inclusive framework and scope that we have in it, we're really looking across all worldviews and being very inclusive, not just looking at mainstream worldviews and value systems. And the values assessment really, I think, laid an incredibly strong foundation for thinking about how we do do this effectively in different contexts, national, international, local contexts as well with the values typology that was established. This figure, I think, underpins a lot of the discussions that I'm hearing around the COP over here, and that's extending the diagram that was developed in the first global assessment, which looked at the direct and indirect drivers and how they impact on biodiversity in these three biomes, and identified this values and behaviors as a bit of an unknown sort of vertical column to the left of the indirect drivers. in the transformative change assessment, responding to the question that came from the first global assessment, which was essentially identifying the transformative changes needed. So then in our plenary and from discussions in the CBD context as well, the question was posed, what is transformative change? So we were mandated to do an assessment on this and it identified these three underlying causes from all the evidence. that is accumulated out there, not only in the scientific literature, but also in in grey literature and from indigenous and local and other world views and experience. aggregated across all of this evidence these three sets of underlying causes so disconnection from and domination over nature and people concentration of power and wealth and prioritization of short-term individual and material gains and this evidence has has been amalgamated from from all around the world in different cultures and different contexts and so on and this is aggregating it into a into a knowledge synthesis framework with with this language that that was developed and approved at our at our plenary in 2024 in Namibia. Now one of the one of the challenges is translating all of this with our conceptual framework into language that that many actors face and together with others in IPES I mean I've really this this provides more of a personal interpretation this is not at all what comes from the IPES finding itself but I think it helps to understand the meaning of this language. What I got from the first global assessment, I was a coordinating lead author in that, is that those contributions from nature that were increasing, all the others were decreasing, those ones that are increasing in the little red box there, are increasing specifically because They are the material values from nature that our economic systems maximize the production of to deliver these goods to society. And it's that action that imposes the direct drivers, all five direct drivers of biodiversity loss come from that sort of economic paradigm. And that causes the decline in all of the other contributions from nature that we documented in the first global assessment. And we could see at that point in recent years when we tried to maximize a fourth contribution from nature, so carbon sequestration using the same logic, the same economic and financial systems, that of course causes decline in other contributions from nature and in aspects of nature as well. And it's because it's applying the same system, the same value system to how we leverage those values from nature. And so we can see that the global crises come from this particular economic system that we have that is dominant and mainstreamed around the world. And if we continue to apply this to other elements in nature, we produce the same results. So we need solutions that produce focus on balanced solutions or co-benefits across the system. and to transform the economic systems to sustainable bioeconomy and circular equitable. And no surprise, this is essentially the topics that were identified through the wisdom of the discussions that we have in all of our processes, the topics of the nexus assessment and the transformative change assessments. To look at the nexus assessment looked at these balancing, looking at synergies and co-benefits across sectors rather than trade-offs. and the transformative change assessment looking at, well, what is, how do we transform the system that we have? And this framework also gives an opportunity to see how we connect across the assessment. So the question that was posed to me was how do we, how do the nexus and transformative change assessments contribute to the delivery of the global biodiversity framework? But it's clear to me that the Nexus assessment really looked at five elements. Two of them are nature elements, three of them are economic elements, and the complex interlinkages between those. So looking at this bottom up, detailed look at how do we promulgate our economic activities, how do we leverage benefits from nature in local context, in national context around the world. It's very tangible, very active focused, very solution focused. The transformative change assessment essentially had the reciprocal view, looking from the societal values that drive or determine how our economic actors act, what the license that they have to produce and to sell into markets and so on. How does that establish these underlying causes and what are the values that deliver that, that determine the indirect drivers, the subsidies, the regulations, how we use technology, how we use data and knowledge, and the need they identified to change actions across views, structures and practices which go across those three areas. The business assessment seemed like quite a specific sort of methodological assessment, like some of other assessments we've done in focused areas, but actually it focuses on the actors in the center of this sustainable development framework, the businesses that really promulgate all of the economic activities around the world. Governments, of course, determine what businesses can do in their countries, but it's business actors that drive the main actions that basically either impact on nature or provide benefits to people as well across societies. And the values assessment really set this up, saying how, depending on your value system, this system can operate very differently. If your value system is to maximize short-term material gain, that's what you'll do. Your actors will extract as much as possible, as quickly as possible from nature, sell things to society. If your value system is for balance and sustainability, your values can tell the markets to do that, and the markets can behave that way if the instruction set is appropriate for that. So I think this provides, especially in a in intergovernmental space where the sustainable development framework is so important and is so foundational with agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals that we need to achieve balance across these elements that it's really important to sort of translate our framings into the policy spaces that governments making decisions and can connect findings from our assessments to the specific policies that you might need in national circumstances to deliver on these rather than a global overarching prescription of how it should be done. So then I'll just now just go briefly and apologies to the assessment authors because I'm just giving very brief highlights of elements from transformative change in Nexus. So I already showed this figure how the transformative change assessments are extended out from indirect drivers to the underlying causes and how these underpin the things that need to change across views, structures, and practices that over-exploit nature and drive inequality. And looking at this, I also get the sense that, you know, views relate to the values that determine the underlying causes. Structures are very much around the indirect drivers and the regulations and so on, and practices about the actions that are done, you know, how fishing is done, what gear is used, and so on. And it's not enough to just change one and any one element. You need to try and change across multiple elements across this cascade of actions. And the important thing about this figure as well as I would offer in these discussions here at the CBD is that these are complex concepts. There's a lot of words when you start to lay it all out, but perhaps it's enough just to have key words in the text, indirect drivers or underlying causes, because once you mention those words, And we know the foundations of those terms in the frameworks that it best puts together. We know what underlying causes means. We know the cascade of things that need to happen, that can be done in order to leverage success, to actually put in place actions and policies to address underlying causes in different contexts. I'll just highlight as well the strategies, the five strategies were identified by the transformative change assessment. to address the underlying causes. And here you can see that I've grouped them into these three buckets of society, economy and nature. So at the top, you can see strategy five was on shifting views and values. Strategy four was on transforming governance. It's very much about the instructions from society to economic actors about what to do. In the middle section, strategies three and two about very much about transforming economic and financial paradigms, driving sectoral change as well in the specific ways that we impact on nature. And then strategy one is about conserving and regenerating nature in places of value to nature and people. So the findings can be sort of split across these buckets in a consistent way. The nexus assessments as well. Just focusing on the response options here that were, where 71 of them were identified across the five elements of the nexus and then grouped into these 10 categories. There's a lot of discussion around the specifics of the response options, and that's understandable because they cover such a wide scope of actions that are possible to improve the state of nature and of people and to ensure co-benefits and synergies across different sectors and remove trade-offs. The intent in these response options and the findings of the next assessment is not to prescribe that these are the actions that should be done, but from all the evidence that was available, these are the actions that we could find enough evidence to show. how you can generate co-benefits if you're trying to do, just choose one of these perhaps, in reducing pollution on managing wastewater, how do you manage wastewater in a way that delivers co-benefits with, whether it's food or health systems, with biodiversity and with climate at the same time. And these Response options run across a whole, there's 71 of them. I look at them with an ocean focus, often asked to see how relevant they are across different sectors. They run across many different contexts in which they can be applied. And the key thing, sorry, if I just go back, one key thing is about how they can be bundled and sequenced and the enabling conditions that are needed to implement them together. I'll finish quickly with just pointing out that there's guidance in both assessments for operationalization. On the one hand, for Nexus Governance, this roadmap of eight steps that can be taken, not in sequence, but in very complex and interactive ways to identify how best to implement and scale response options and transformative change assessment. This almost like a checklist of how do you, if you're doing interventions, how well do they perhaps deliver on transform to change, how do they correspond to the strategies, principles, or visions, which barriers do they address. And then lastly, this is a figure from the Nexus Assessment SPM, just showing that a lot of the response options and solutions from our assessments do provide benefits across the full scope of GBF targets. Of course, the quantity might be a little bit different, how much they contribute to a target. You can see that all five of the elements we look at go across the whole target structure and of course, the sustainable development goals as well, and emphasizing the integration of how the GBF is really very much part and parcel of delivering on the SDGs and complementary to other convention frameworks that also are critically important. So thank you, I'll stop there, I know I ran over.

Thank you so much, David, and also to Gillian for these two excellent presentations. That was really helpful, I think, that helped set the stage and kick us off for these two days. We are a bit behind schedule, but we are going to take a quick coffee break, and then at 10:30 we will have our first substantive session, Nexus in Practice: Mainstreaming landscape governance. So see you all back here.

We have parallel session.

There's also a parallel session in contact group five. That's the room, contact group five. Thank you. Thank you so much.

We're supposed to start at 1030 but I think maybe 10

I'm going to sleep.

Okay, everyone. We're good to get started now. Good morning again. Sorry for the delay. We just had to had some technical issues with the with uploading stuff and downloading stuff. But yeah, we're good to go now. Thank you. And welcome to everyone to this first session of the Science Policy Forum, where we will take a deep dive. It is a deep dive, although it will be very brief presentations. It's a deep dive on how do we see operationalization of the concept of nexus approaches, mainstreaming, all of these various terms that basically speak about how we need to act together across sectors, across active groups. And so joining, my name is Sunita Subramanian. I am a researcher with the United Nations University based in Tokyo. I will be moderating this session and I have the immense honor to be joined by an excellent panel of scholars, researchers, and implementers, I would say. I will introduce them very, very briefly, and I'm going to ask each of you to give a bit more of background of what you do, but I'll just introduce your name and where you're from when I introduce you. So What we, because we are a big panel and because we are short on time, what our panelists will do is to basically look from their context and address two key questions. One, identify key challenges, key challenges that they see from their own context that affect implement, operationalizing nexus approaches, and also identify two enabling factors that would help operationalized nexus approaches. But then they will also give a little bit of a background of the context that they are working with. So without much ado, I'm going to hand over the floor to Pam, Pamela McHargue, who is from Rutgers University, but she's also got many other identities. To you, Pam.

Great. Thank you, Sunita. I'm Pam Mckelvey. I am here wearing a badge of Rutgers University, but I was one of the co-chairs of the IPBES Nexus assessment, so happy to speak to that. As David Ober just explained in the previous keynote opening, Nexus was one of two IPBES assessments that came out in 2024. We were asked to look at the interlinkages across biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change. So it's a really nice scene setting sort of assessment for this particular panel. And so I want to make a couple of interventions coming from the Nexus assessment. The first is to just quickly say that, as David mentioned, one of the things that we did in that assessment was to put forward 71 response options, that is, things we can do now, actions that can be taken that cut across those five elements, biodiversity, food, water, health, and climate change, and that get us a more integrated approach. So one category of those 71 is around integrated planning and governance. So David showed you that wheel with 10 different categories. And so one of those categories is really about integration. And so I think it speaks very much to this particular panel. So the overall findings of the assessment are that our sectoral policies tend to produce outcomes that are misaligned, that duplicate one another, that are often inconsistent. They fail to address the indirect drivers of change. And so thinking at the landscape level is actually a place where we can overcome those silos. I think that that is a really important place-based approach that we can really see change on the ground. So we, as one of the 71 response options, let me just highlight one of those, and that is integrated landscape seascape approaches. We have a whole section of the report looking at case studies of those integrated landscape approaches. We look at over 30 specific case studies. You can actually go to the report and dig in. For example, there's a case study from Taiwan where there has been some interventions between Donghua University and local planners to combine forest restoration with more organic agriculture in terraced rice paddies, managing the watershed uplands to the coast. The outcomes of that particular project were removals of things like ammonia and nitrates that had been polluting the coastal areas. And within five years of this project, water quality and freshwater and coastal biodiversity had all improved. So a very rapid improvement due to those integrated approaches. So, what has stood in the way? So, we were asked as part of this panel to identify two potential barriers and the enablers to overcome them. So, first, as I mentioned, major barrier, sectoral fragmented institutions. And the second barrier, I would say, is a lack of attention to continuity, time, and monitoring. A lot of landscape initiatives run on a very short time scale, maybe three to five years. That is way too short to see integrated outcomes, particularly for health, which is one of the key Nexus elements. So we need more time to understand the health outcomes of a lot of our interventions. So what makes successful cases work? Again, I want to highlight two things from Nexus. The first is co-design and co-management with local affected communities. These can include indigenous peoples. This can include local planning departments. It's really about making sure that your interventions have legitimacy. Having that co-design helps increase adoption. It diminishes resistance. And that working and acting together gives you the mechanisms for long-term monitoring, which is what we need to be adaptive over time. And the second is really to identify institutions that can help you bridge across scales. So cross-sectoral coordination and jointly produced knowledge work together. And in order for those to be enablers, we need intermediaries that help us do that. And the great thing is one of those key intermediaries, a lot of us are in them, universities. Universities play a really crucial role in connecting actors across scales. Sometimes we think of ourselves as, man, we're not decision makers, we're not in places of power. We are connecting places and we need to leverage that more to help connect those decision makers with the people whose work is affected. So I'd like to end on that note, but also say that on Monday in the ANR Pavilion, we're going to have an hour and a half on the Nexus assessment. And one of the things I'm going to be presenting there is how the Nexus assessment aligns with the outcome of the global report. So looking at those progress indicators that Jillian was telling us about, I'm going to talk a little bit about how many of the Nexus response options we actually see in the global report. So, hopefully, good to see you there, and I'll close there.

Thanks, Pam. Yeah, thanks for raising the issue of bridging institutions and that everyone has an agency, especially the academia, a very big agency. I'm going to hand over the flow now to-- why should I go to-- yeah, OK. No, I'm going to hand it over to Joanna.

Thanks very much. There may be some slides in the background to play for me, but my name is Joanna Smallwood. I'm from the University of Sussex and I'm looking at legal and governance mechanisms for the rights of nature and ecological guardianship and how these can operationalize nexus in practice and mainstream stream across landscape governance. Next slide, please. So my questions myself, I suppose, when I approached preparing for this talk was, is rights of nature a nexus approach? and I was very pleased to see in the Nexus report that it is actually one of the response options. So we have it within the Nexus approach as a response option, and I'm going to unpack a bit more about why it is relevant for addressing mainstreaming across sectors and across scales. I'd also like to point out that rights of nature and ecocentric approaches are in the KMGBF. So we also have that support in section C and other targets mentioning mother earth centric actions, rights of nature and diverse values of nature. And I was interested in the keynote speeches this morning to also start connecting the nexus approach with the transformative approach, because I would also argue that rights of nature can be transformative. So it's a holistic approach, rights of nature, really placing the sort of values of nature which are intrinsic and relational and empowering stakeholders. So speaking to the co-design and the legitimacy of actions, really empowering maybe underrepresented stakeholders within processes and thinking about the more than human and the nature within these decisions, which is so often missing because so many are anthropocentric. It also recognises ecological interdependency. So when you think in a rights of nature way, you're not just thinking in silo, you're thinking of all things which are impacting the ecosystem and the humans and more than humans within that ecosystem. So it connects biodiversity, water, health, all the nexus issues which are so well outlined in the report. It also thinks about colonial injustices and connects and tries to start repairing some of these injustices, for example, by giving land tenure to indigenous people and local communities. So we can think about those temporal scales. And spatially, it's a very growing global biodiversity movement for rights of nature. So you start to sort of see sort of 700 initiatives across 26 countries. So we start to see some spaces joining up together and connecting different types of ecosystems. So in this forest, rivers, mangroves, whichever ecosystems are in the area. Next slide, please. So I'm just going to very briefly go through two case studies and talk about enabling factors and challenges in relation to rivers. And this is a river in Ecuador where there are constitutional rights of nature. And these have been used to recognize the rights of the river Mashangara, and they have formed a guardianship body. and it is mainly formed of women. There is a voice for the river within the guardianship body, and, interestingly, the ombudsman will report to the courts on compliance for an action plan to restore the river. It is a really exciting development. The enabling factors connect biodiversity, water health and community wellbeing through this shared governance approach to hold authorities accountable and to enable action to be taken to improve river health for all. Some of the challenges for me, I saw the sustained funding of the projects when resources are lacking both in the state level and non-state level. Also ensuring that the participation is really inclusive across fragmented institutions and not just tokenistic. Then I'm going to move on to the next slide, please, and just talk briefly about the development of the UK rights of river movement. So here in the UK, we do not have laws on rights of nature at the national level, but there's a very growing bottom-up movement. And it's very interesting to see how this is bringing communities together, diverse stakeholders, so farmers, river users, water companies in conversations around how governance can work better, how citizen science can be used to help start restoring the rivers in our country, which are very, very polluted. However, the absence of having statutory recognition could limit the river representation and accountability, and there is still fragmentation across councils. So, really finding ways and conversations to start bringing these bodies together to start addressing the approaches in a more holistic way. Thank you very much.

So I was just going to reflect that it also resonates so much with the Nature Futures framework and in that the nature as culture framework, because your work, especially in Ecuador, speaks about the sacred spaces and it's motivating. When you're talking of operationalization, we are talking about communication and motivating. stakeholders to take action and you can, all of these are entry points that can come from the research that we do. Great work, thank you, Joanna. Okay, I'm gonna hand it over now to Ives. Go on, Ives.

Hello, hello.

Yes.

Good morning, everybody. I hope you're still with us after this exhausting week. And so I thought while maybe Sunita puts on my slides, I thank you very much. I wanted to start with a personal reflection from a discussion we had two days ago in the academic and research hub, where we talked about water bottles and coffee mugs and how that could be a response option that has multiple benefits. But then I mentioned that I went to those coffee booths and tried to get a coffee, and they said, "We can't accept them, sorry." because of sanitary options, right? So we see that this idea of sanitary and environment comes together. I know this is a big leap, but you know what I mean. And then I could argue with them about like the need of being environmental conscious and having those coffee mugs exacted, but in the end, they feel accountable that they need to watch the sanitary regulations because that's what they're going to be checked on. And that's what accountability is about. And that's what I want to talk about today, because in the end, it's about people and putting people into the position of acting on this nexus, taking into account these various dimensions that need to be thought about together. And we've been thinking about this with quite large author group, many of them are here as well, in the context of CBD and how that can be implemented on the national level and also in the private sector. And we've looked at this, well, first of all, accountability is, or we defined it as, are actors who take decisions held accountable for implementation of the global biodiversity framework. And we've looked at this in three, four dimensions. So normative, so it's actually clarified what they are held accountable for. Relational dimension, and I'll come to that in a second, who actually holds them accountable and do we need to think more about these other actors who sit in the second or third tier. Then evaluative, like how is this account a bit like this action, this agency evaluated and what consequences arise from it. And maybe we go to the next slide because I know I can only look into something, some aspects. And one thing that I thought after the discussions this week I wanted to flag is really When we think about implementation, we mainly think about the first row, the decision makers. So the governments, or in this case, we see the governments as the delegations who are here, who are not necessarily the agents who implement across the nexus. It's several governmental actors in each party country that actually implements on the national level and then there are the companies and investors. But they are held accountable by other actors. So for example, each party is held accountable by the other parties. And they can do so if they have the information, for example, now with the global review. But then there's also many actors such as us or NGOs or IGOs or media or whoever who transmits what's going on here to the outside world, who again holds the parties accountable. And the same happens on the national and in the private sector. And I think my message here is that maybe we should think more about those relationships and think about ways that we create a situation where a positive or like an active implementation of the decision makers is actually in their benefit. So, you know, incentives on a personal level that, for example, somebody who implements a national biodiversity strategy brings in agriculture without putting themselves into problems. They say that they have to work on biodiversity, but then they go and talk to agricultural people, and that may create more problems for them personally than it supports these incentives. I have another slide, but I just want to flag that I will I'm talking in more detail on this also in the Academic and Research Hubs at 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon, and happy to keep exchanging with you and talking about accountability.

Thanks, Yves. That was a great framing. I guess even for the report, it's like we could probably just use your first slide to start off with what this was trying to do, this session tries to do, and also getting into the flow of implementing these approaches. Thanks, I'm going to hand over the floor to you, Simona, and please introduce yourself and go on I'll find your slides in a minute.

Perfect thanks so much hi everybody my name is Simona capizani I'm an associate professor at Durham University I'm also here with the California super delegation and California Global biodiversity Alliance as their co-lead uh between academic research and science policy interface so thanks so much um hopefully you're hearing echoing and and synthesis actually across a lot of our talks we've heard about fragmentation time so um I don't want to repeat some of these things but I think the fact that coming up is something notable that we can bring into discussion. I want to add another dimension into this. So we all know that the biodiversity governance regime, if it's unable to leverage opportunities for cooperation across different issue areas, risks being ineffective at reversing biodiversity loss. It also risks entrenching and perpetuating climate harms, but also injustices in the ways that I've just heard from my colleagues. And so political acknowledgement of that need for greater cooperation is of course increasingly being acknowledged, but where we're falling short is in the context of implementation. And I think through some of the comments I wanna remark here today is to think about how we can use fragmentation as an advantage or how we can kind of leverage it across different scales of governance. But, you know, left unaddressed, these barriers to mainstreaming and implementation and governing of the nexus can persist, which can entrench single sector priorities or can entrench particular powerful interests. and can continuously produce maybe artificial trade-offs that can worsen outcomes across issue areas. And one thing that I want to note again, still on the challenges side, is that even win-win synergies or win-win scenarios themselves still come with trade-offs. So we do need a principled approach to think about how we are going to make decisions and how multiple decision-making centers of authority are going to be guided in a way that's not ad hoc to address those kinds of trade-offs. And so in thinking about principled guidance in some of the work that I do, I think that we need to worry about effectiveness, right, of any given intervention, but I also wanted to bring up the sort of normative or value-laden need for evaluation as well. So, we need kinds of evaluative criteria in considering different dimensions to address the underlying or implicit value assumptions that drive decision-making in light of those trade-offs, and to see whether and to what extent certain kinds of values the ability to actually work across the nexus. And so that requires a clear understanding of how a governance regime actually manages competing values and how those get entrenched and institutionalized. And also, of course, the power dynamics across these different governance scales that we just saw from some of my colleagues that presented. And so I wanted to talk about the importance of mapping values across diverse decision-making contexts and with a chance to be able to understand then how we can enable bottom up governance as well. And so some of the work I wanted to talk about was work that I've done in the northeast of the UK with farmers specifically thinking about soil centric approaches and what a soil centric approach to governance looks like. So that was embedded within the context of these communities. And often they're painted as maybe resistant to certain kinds of interventions and often then painted with a sense of what those value commitments are. And in engaging with people, what you end up finding out is there is a tremendous amount of commitment, let's say, to intergenerational land management or relational values between custodianship with the land is something that folks within agriculture and the farming sector do want be able to implement. But because of the way that certain structures basically entrench short-term decision making, so we talked about time as a challenge, they have to trade off those values that are then perceived as just being like merely an economic focus. And so one of the things that our IPAS values assessment, so I wanted to talk about the values assessment in line with the nexus assessment, has noted that the relationship between power structures and value construction is an under-researched area. So some of this research actually speaks to that and the importance of that for the Nexus. So I wanted to note that, you know, this was over 50 semi-structured interviews and engagements with around 80 to 100 farmers in the northeast of England, and it included a range of different farm types. So arable, mixed, coastal, inland, estate. And in that kind of values mapping, you found out that the issue of agency and the ability to act on value pluralism was the deciding factor of how integrated of an actual soil management practice folks could actually mobilize and whether and to what extent they were able to implement that in a bottom-up way. So it's not really a lack of willingness and wanting to engage in these sorts of practices. And one of the things that, of course, comes out is then thinking about what are the sorts of things that enable agency, so just in the last moment, the next slide. It's important when we think about values assessment to think about who are the agents that we're speaking about and what are the plurality of values that are working across these different decision-making centers and the folks that are involved and what barriers are there. And then to think about which ones get prioritized and how the institutional factors entrench them. And so to be mapping value, values evaluation for the nexus as an enabling factor is something key that we don't want to leave out. So I'll leave it there.

Wow. personal note, I was involved in the values assessments. It's great to see uptake, which is something that we kept saying uptake is required at multiple levels, especially in research, because that promotes or triggers, you know, follow on activities. So that's great. Also, it's fabulous how you highlighted the messiness that arises from these multiple values that exist and the power hierarchies that are there and the trade-offs, of course, which are latent and also visible. So great. Great, thanks for highlighting all of that. I'm going to hand over to Josh now.

It is a great pleasure to be here. My name is Joshua Tewksbury. I'm the director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute based in Panama. And one of the things about is kind of Nexus science and the way in which institutions approach this is that it varies a lot, right? It varies a lot. And I'm speaking from the perspective of the science side of the science to policy interface, because I think as we work forward on this interface, there's a whole bunch of learning being done by a bunch of different actors. And that learning looks a little bit different depending on what your incentive structures are. And the incentive structures in science are often different than they are in the policy community. And recognizing those differences allows us to work towards a common center where we have greater impact with the work we do. So I'm just going to draw on three examples of kind of on the ground how this kind of nexus work gets done and hope to from that find some commonalities. So the three examples are the Anangua Saluda program that's been going for 15 years. It's the largest tropical reforestation experiment program in the, in the, in, what's the largest one in the tropics, 700 hectares. attachment scale, really trying to understand the full range of ecosystem services that land use has on communities, on livelihoods, everything from biodiversity to food provisioning to water provisioning. And because it's done at very broad scales, we can tease a lot of these things out. Amazing project. Doesn't have impact unless people know the answers to it. Doesn't have impact unless we get it out into communities and actually figure out how communities use that. So I'll talk a little bit about how we've now moved into the indigenous communities in the Ngabe Bugle, Comarca in Panama, and said, how do we do restoration with you? What's that process work like? How is that co-creation process work? Some challenges and some learnings from that. Similarly, you can start with the connections with the local landowners and build two projects. So in the Bakuru Droa community in Darien, this is the N'Bara indigenous community. We've been working for close to 30 years, working with them to design research around their needs. And what that has emerged into is a program that is now allowing us to work with them on collaborative botany and species discovery and carbon and biodiversity mapping that plugs into our global programs and connects them with plots like theirs all over the world through GeoTrees and Forest Geo. But it took 20 years of trust building to be able to connect to the projects we're now doing in botany and that sort of consistency. And finally, in ocean resilience, we're working to connect local fisheries to the conditions that they live in and understand how their value systems are changing as climate changes, how their food systems are changing, how climate changes. And the thing about that program is it's not just science to policy, it's science to policy and also trying to stitch together the gaps that exist between sectors. One of the big gaps we found is that scientists don't know how to talk finance and finance don't know how to talk science. And so we're working explicitly to build fellows programs to stitch between these so we can create a cohort of individuals of next generation leaders who are more literate in what we're going to need to be literate in to have impact with our science, and likewise have finance leaders literate in the needs of the communities and the ecosystems through which their financial instruments will run. And so those are three things we're doing here. Next slide, I'll just do a little bit. Good. So this is great because I wrote these trust and longevity before I heard about everything else. And I was like, oh, yeah, perfect. I think we're on the same frame here. Developing trust in these programs takes time, right? So that's so like you don't, you can't go into a system of governance that has been marginalized and ignored by other systems of governance for some time and expect to gain trust on day one. So when we, even though we'd spent 15 years developing restoration practices in these landscapes with AgroSalud, we spent a full year just working with the community to figure out what before we started planting any trees. And a lot of that also goes to who assumes risk when you're working with communities. So external stakeholders want to put the risk on the community holders when you're doing restoration and only make payments when you actually see results. That's never going to work to get large-scale buy-in. So we assume the risk and we buy the carbon for 20 years, regardless of how successful it is. If you keep working at it, you still get paid. Because that way, we build and we learn, and we can build experiments with communities and they feel a part of it. And now that program has expanded to way more farmer communities in the Camarca than we can manage. Similarly the other programs, there's a need to sort of stay with the program. So longevity is something that we need to work beyond grant cycles. One trick on doing that well and really building programs that can last is connecting principal investigators, connecting different worldviews, connecting revenue streams so that when one grant fails, there's three others that can step in. For our Bakua Droa program, we are a major source of income in the community in the Dediend. So we can't afford just because the grant cycle was over to just walk away. Then we lose all of that trust because we've lost the longevity. So we have to have backup mechanisms to always make sure we're engaging with the community on their terms so that we're in a place to support the next level of research with them. And I think that's the same thing we're doing the ocean and governance work. I think I'll stop there because we're out of time.

Thanks, Josh. No, thanks. I'm not going to get into the trust and governance and longevity thing because that's already been well said. But also, I'd like to thank you for bringing up this notion of working at a landscape, a contiguous area with multiple actors and the necessity to identify risks. and buffer them. And that's very important. And how do you, and also, so it's the science, but working with practitioners, but at the same time, while operationalizing, bringing in the support mechanisms and to see how we motivate and allow people to do what we are asking them to do or helping them to do. It's not that they don't know what is to be done, but it has to be done. Thanks, Josh. What do you, Anne?

All right. microphone seems to be working. Hi everyone, my name is Annie Vernig. I'm a strategic advisor on science and policy for UNDP. And so I think I have some slides here, but I'm gonna talk a little bit about using spatial data and planning to operationalize the Nexus approach. So I wanna start out just taking us back a little bit to the high level. When we look at a map of the world these days, we are struck by there's increasing human impact on the planet, no matter where we look. On this map, you're seeing the human industrial index. Those areas in orange and yellow, those are highly impacted by humans, whereas green is a little bit more intact. So no matter where we look, we're seeing this competition for land, whether it's being used for food, for energy, for infrastructure, or to safeguard nature and all of nature's critical services to humanity. Maps like this can also help us to map a number of the things that we've heard from other speakers. So we can map water security. We can map food provision. We can map key watersheds. We can map where carbon is kept in the ground. And by bringing together this spatial data, we can develop a plan that shows how to balance these competing needs and where to take action across the issues that are important for everyone. So when we look at spatial data and planning, there are a couple key elements here. So first, spatial planning can help to show us where to take action to manage critical ecosystems, to develop agriculture to feed millions of people, and also to restore key areas for biodiversity. And spatial data can also help us to monitor the impact of those actions, to show where implementation is actually working on the ground. But to our challenges question, we've seen through the global report, we've heard across this week, countries face fundamental issues in accessing and using data for decision making. So the global report highlights things like data gaps, siloed data, lack of technical capacity for GIS and spatial planning and ministries. And we've heard, or at least I have heard in my subset of side events this week, a lot not only about the challenge around data, but the challenge of moving from good data to good evidence to good decisions to good actions on the ground. So it's not only about the data, it's about this full multi-stakeholder process, which we've heard about from a number of our panelists. I think we can go to the next slide here. So we created UN Biodiversity Lab as a tool to support, to address these issues. not only around the data provision, but around engaging stakeholders at all levels around questions of how to access and use data. UNBL is a free open source platform that provides access to over 2000 spatial data layers, mapping nature, nature's benefits to people and climate. It provides spatial analytics so you can see key metrics like biodiversity intactness or human impact on land. And it provides access to spatial planning tools, which is what I'm going to talk about a little bit next if we can get to the next slide. So just last year, we mapped an integrated spatial planning tool on UN Biodiversity Lab that enables users to map areas that are essential for nature, climate, and people. So here we're getting to a lot of the points we heard across this panel. We can bring together data layers that map things like biodiversity, water provision, carbon sequestration, and much more, and we can put these in the hands of users. So any country in the world can use this. They can set area-based targets for protection, for management, for restoration. They can weight their priorities. Maybe water security is a critical priority for one country. Maybe coastal inundation and flooding is a key priority for another country. They can look at these trade-offs and balances. They can use the tool to run a spatial prioritization in real time across a group of stakeholders, bringing people together in a room and result in a map like this. So you're seeing for Cuba, I think the legend is cut off a little bit, and I cannot remember the colors, but I'm going to go with green are existing protected areas. I believe blue is new areas for protection. Orange is for sustainable management, and red is for restoration. But basically, colors aside, this map is providing a national talking point and tool to develop the spatial plan, talking across sectors to see where these types of nature-based actions can have the most impact, not only for biodiversity, but for all of these other key things that we're seeing in the Nexus assessment for carbon, for food, for water. And this, I want to emphasize here that these types of tools and maps, this is tools we put in the hands of stakeholders. It can be used to initiate discussions, to talk about maybe this is the wrong map, maybe this action that's indicated here is not actually what's appropriate to local context or what we're hearing from local stakeholders. So I think I'm over time, but I'll stop there and just say it's a great way to be able to talk across these different initiatives, and thanks so much for having me.

Thanks, Annie. Thanks also. So in a way, I mean, the UNDP is not a research organization in our minds, at least, but then it also shows that there's a lot of synthesis of information that's done, useful tools that are being developed to support implementation of global mandates. And I truly appreciate that you brought in this issue of data sets and tools that are repositories that can be used by multiple stakeholders for various reasons, whether it's for research purposes or for implementation purposes, of course, and that's where data is power, now we all know that, and it's something that also can be co-designed with communities, so there's a lot of work that is happening in this space, and it's good that we have it here, so we look at operationalization in that context too. Okay, now I'm gonna hand over the floor to Pablo Lopez from the Urban Biodiversity Hub. I'm gonna fetch your presentation. Here, found it.

All right, thank you very much. Hello, hello. Hello, hello, all right. Thank you very much and good morning to everyone. So I represent the Urban Biodiversity Hub and today I'd like to share an example of how we've been working to translate integrated approaches into practical tools, especially for local governments, through the Urban Nature Indices, which were developed together with the Urban Biodiversity Hub and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. So first of all, when we talk about biodiversity, we tend to think about protected areas and very far away places, but there is there's biodiversity within the city, the boundaries of the city, but also cities have a lot of influence in the surrounding landscapes beyond those boundaries. And this is precisely where a nexus approach becomes relevant. And so this framework, can we go to the next one? Sorry. So these slides, sorry, the next one, please. Oh, before, before. So these are just like supporting slides, but I will be explaining what we did. So The Urban Nature Indices, they bring together six interconnected themes, which are like consumption drivers, human pressures, habitat status, species status, nature's contributions to people, and governance responses. And the Urban Nature Indices, or UNI, allows governments to look at these relationships together, and, well, connecting environmental pressures, ecological conditions, benefits to people, et cetera, but developing this is just one thing, developing this integrated framework, but making it useful is another. So from our experience, we would like to highlight two challenges. And the first one is the fragmented governance. So biodiversity, climate, water, infrastructure, urban planning are frequently managed by different institutions. It's with their own priorities, data sets, et cetera. So bringing these sectors together requires more than just a common methodology. It also requires coordination, and shared understanding of what ecological performance means. The second challenge is the uneven availability of information and technical capacities. So cities have different resources and capabilities. Some cities have very sophisticated monitoring systems, while others struggle to have even basic data, environmental data. So a framework that requires every city to collect the same information would risk precisely those governments that could benefit the most, right? So the second, well, sorry, to address these challenges, I would like to highlight two enabling factors for this uni approach. And the first one is flexibility and collaborative design. So rather than imposing a fixed set of indicators, the Urban Nature Indices offer a menu, we call it a menu of about these 30 indicators across the six different themes. and they can select according to their capacities. The second one is, well, the cities, they go through a self-assessment process and they can see what are their capacities, if they can fill all of them, all these indicators or not. And the second enabling factor is connecting local measurements with broader policy objectives that could track improvement over time. So all of these indicators, they are we measure them against the global biodiversity framework and the SDGs. So, well, it's important to highlight that this scoring system is trying to, it focuses on improvement over time. So it's not about comparison, it's not about just measuring, but just seeing how cities are improving or if they're going in the right direction. And, um, I think that's particularly, um, relevant for our discussion today, we've heard about many different, uh, contexts and, and stakeholders, this is for local governments and, and cities. And yeah, mainstreaming biodiversity is not just creating more indicators, but it's also how we understand, it's changing how we understand the relationship between sectors and how we measure progress and ultimately how decisions are made. So yeah, just to recognize that cities are not isolated from their surroundings and their landscapes, but also they're part of much larger ecological and socioeconomical systems, so yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Pablo. And I'd like to take, yeah, that's the key message I was going to highlight, that cities are not isolated from everything else that we talk about as nature. It's not a separate body and it's part of the landscape. It's part of all of the various actors. It's a very important point and that is a very useful indicator set that you've developed too, making it adaptable to different contexts, very interesting work. But it's a nice segue, I had not designed it this way, but it's a nice segue to our next speaker who is responsible for ensuring that all of this ties together in her realm of authority, let's say, where she has to operationalize it. I'd like to now invite Ms. Nubia Cordoba, who's the governor of the Choco from Colombia. I'm gonna just take a second to change these slides. She's got some slides, but we have them in a separate. I hope this works. Just give me a moment. You can introduce yourself.

Hello to everyone. I'm Nubia Cordova, the governor of Choco. And I think if any one of you was in the COP16, then you know that Choco is part of the biogeographical Choco in Colombia. is the zone with most of the concentration of biodiversity in the world. And I'm here to talk about how it is important for us and for our communities to address the managing of the territories, but also the assets of the territory in the pursuit of human development. And human development in a contest that, unfortunately, in Colombia, put communities in the lowest rates of human development, in the middle of a lot of resources, natural resources, most of them. So Chocó is a department, or state, in Colombia. It's the only one with two seas. It's in the border with Panama. It's a territory shape of water and full of forest. And we have the blessing of being the connection, the bridge in between South America and North America in the center. And we have now access to the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea with most of our rivers and capacities about water and raining. We have the second rate of

reign in the world after Tierra, but I don't know India. So I will say that we are the first. Next one, please. So we have two reserve of biosphere declared by UNESCO, Tribugacupican, Baudou in 2023 and Darien, north of Choco in 2024. Most of you could have been listening about Choco because of the Darien path, have been really critical in migration routes past years. And what is important about Darien is not the human mobilization of people trying to go north, but what is important is that we have now a reserve of biosphere right there that we need to manage despite of the kind of situations going on in our territories. So what is particular about Choco is that we have a governance that it is not just the national authorities and the subnational authorities as I am, but we have a community authorities. And this is really, really important to us. Choco is, the population of Choco is mostly African descendant people, Afro-Colombian communities, and indigenous communities in the sense of America. But What we are having work all these years in the development of law is the communities, they have also the right to determine what is going on with the territories, what is going on with the managing of the land assets and natural assets, and how you cannot break the condition of the link in between the territory and the communities. mostly if they depend on it for food, for shelter, for the conception of life as they would like it. So the scientific evidence and local knowledge must be together with the decision making and with the clarification of public policy about this. You cannot detach the community knowledge and community ways to the information you got to put together to planification in this case, and of course, to put in exercise and in execution, you know, these policies, because most of the time, you can plan a policy and you can discuss a policy, but in the territories, you will not have it. you will not have it secured if you don't consult with the communities. So Choco's priority for cooperation are, we have been in a discussion, actually, in the past COP, and it was the recognition of Afro-Colombian people as indigenous people. Those are a really difficult discussion because actually you cannot say that Afro-Colombian people, Afro-Colombian communities, they're indigenous people in a certain way. But actually, we have proved that you cannot understand the territory and their local resources and natural resources without these communities. And this community cannot live and cannot persist without them. So we have been proposing that at least we need to recognize that the managing of the territory is in the hands of the community. And the conservation have been in the hands of the communities, despite of, for example, illegal groups and a violence that can be striking the leaders and they can be, you know, make it more difficult for them to manage all the, for example, forest and water and gold and other local resources we have. But what we are trying to establish in here is the science in this case, research in this case. Policy making in this case can be really, really useful in a discussion, national discussion, international discussion, but they are made just for national authorities in national context. They are not being made for subnational context in community governance. And this is important thing to talk about because in Choco, we have these communities doing everything, the managing, the protection, the conservation, And of course, of course, the hope of their own territory and their own resources will allow them to have a good life. And I think that that should be the purpose of everything in here. I think so. So the Biographical Choco is, I think, a treasure for not just for Colombia, it is for the world, and I think it is just as important that you know there is a place called Choco with the highest concentration of biodiversity in the world by a square meter. And just as Amazonia, it got some challenges, but it got some communities right now, right there, trying to conservate and trying to apply all these policies we're discussing right here. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Damona. It's a very strong call to all of us here to do work that is purposive, that is fit for purpose and can be implemented on the ground, but also to be working closely, especially if we are looking at operationalizing all of these big concepts that we have here. Like you said, it's all relevant up there, but when it comes to the ground, it needs to resonate with the people on the ground and it should be relevant for their good life. Yeah, it's a very, very important point. It's not a point, it's an important statement to make. And also the statement you made about integrating knowledge, different sciences, both from the ground and that comes from this kind of a research, mainstream research community. Thank you for that. I'd like to open the floor for feedback, questions, comments. We'll start with Ruth, then Volker. Let's take a couple and then we can respond.

Good morning. I'm Ruth Spencer from the Caribbean island of Antigua and Barbuda. I work with local community groups. My question is to the third person, yes. You spoke about longevity, sustainable projects. You do not live in the country, and I suppose that your connection is with research groups. Am I correct?

I do live in the country, but my connection is with research groups.

Oh, you live in the country. That is the strength of longevity, having somebody in the country who connects with the local stakeholders. you know, meeting different needs and challenges. So that's what I wanted to ask, because I'm doing, I'm not a scientist, but I'm a professional economist, but I work with the local people. And I find being able to meet with them, I work with about 15 local groups across different conventions. but able to be with them to build capacities to fill knowledge gaps is very important because if you wait on the governments it ain't going to happen so I want IG best to have a strong process where local community groups that are active on the ground have to take up a lot of these responsibilities. I've been going to the different processes, thanks for my friend from university, and I try to build my knowledge because these are the roles I have to carry on in my country, so that's good. It's important to have a seat at the local. Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you very much to all the speakers. Really interesting insights. My question is to the lady rights and rights from the previous speaker. So number four and number five, when we might call them that way. So one spoke about value mapping and one spoke about rights of nature. And I think there's really a connection between two things because it's about prioritization. And it should be perhaps also a flexible prioritization related to under which circumstances are the people live, nature is there. And you spoke about rights and you about prioritization. And I think low governance is really key and central in this point. And I wonder if you want to reflect on this because it's about making decisions among different interests in many cases. Sometimes there are win-win situations, but often really rights are different and interests are different. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Volker. I'm going to take a few more questions.

Sorry, just Volker Moeller, Society for Conservation Biology, because Sonita called me by first name. Sorry.

Thank you. I'm just going to take a few more questions pertinent to values and rights of nature, and then I can get both of you to respond quickly on that. Yes, it's on values and rights of nature, it's to them. Yeah, if it's to, just raise your hands, I'm not going to remember, sorry, we don't have that slide where everyone's names is there up there. So, Joanna and Simone, any questions to them, if you can collect a few so they can respond, your question is to them. Okay, then and you. Okay, first you and then you.

Okay, good morning. Thank you for this forum. I enjoy a lot about this information. My question for UN Lab Hub, Biodiversity Hub, and for, I was surprised, I come from Tunisia, I was surprised by the human industrialized index. I found that my country is in the, fully and high connected. I want more explanation from the map that showed very dark at the end.

Oh, this. Now, I figured it out. So, my question is on rights on nature, also reflecting on the rights of the indigenous people that we heard from the case of Colombia. So, I'm, by the way, an early career researcher. I work on coastal ecosystems and ocean governance. So, my question is, what can we learn from your experience and research on rights of nature and apply it to the developing countries? I'm from India, and I work in Singapore, so in South and Southeast Asian context. Some religious and some indigenous values do recognize these, do recognize nature, rivers, mangroves as place of spirituality, but these are also spaces highly exploited for resource extraction. So how do we balance the needs of the communities, needs of the government while respecting rights of nature and how can it become part of our legal frameworks? Thank you.

Thank you. I am also having problems with my microphone. Thank you so much for that really important question. I can also speak briefly about the mapping from my perspective. With rights of nature, It is always context dependent and has to work with the indigenous peoples and or local communities who live in that area. And it's really interesting in India because there are some developments with the rights of nature in India to start from. But I think some of the lessons, perhaps from my research, are engaging in dialogues unpacking the different values of nature that are within the communities and really trying to think about those and how certain actors can be empowered in different conversations around, for example, mangroves and their spiritual connection. And then to begin to talk with other actors, with the power dynamics of trying to intervene in local local governance processes, if you are building it from the bottom up and starting to bring into play the conversations that the community wants to enact and move forward. It always depends on what level of governance and law you have. In the UK, we do not have that national level, so I talked about building from the bottom up. That can be really effective at changing conversations changing views and beginning to change practices and structures. Of course, there are big power dynamics that you are working against. If you have some national legislation, that gives a bit more power to communities to build on that. It is about speaking to the local people, understanding the pressures on them and the nature that they are part of, and then using that context, I think, for you to start exploring conversations. And just very briefly, the question before was talking about this idea of mapping. I work in very interdisciplinary research teams, so I'm the lawyer, but I work with anthropologists, I work with natural scientists and geographers. The mapping is interesting, and I have been taking notes of the resources. We are in a state of biodiversity crisis, so it is important to prioritise certain areas of nature for me to focus attention on. However, we have to bring that back to the local context and what works for the local people. It is certainly not about excluding local people and sustainable livelihoods within that. Thank you.

Okay, we're all having mic issues today. So just obviously to stress that this point I think extends also to the questions, or this answer responds to the questions of prioritization. I think about value prioritization very close to the issue of legitimacy. So in a kind of governance framework that's highly fragmented, when you want to be thinking about how certain kinds of decision making and therefore the values that are driving those decision-making across trade-offs can be justifiable, you have to think, justifiable to who, right? Who is being engaged in that process? So this requires thinking about procedures and the kinds of institutions that can enable those procedures to actually be able to bring up and bring into the process those value considerations and even the articulation of trade-offs themselves. So with farmers, then I would be going down to Parliament in the UK to brief them on the soil-centric approaches and a lot of the sort of consultation practices that we know are best practices are not being implemented, right? So long-term trust building, but also an opportunity for people not to just articulate you know, needs, but also about how the policies themselves constrain the ability to operate on the values that they hold there. And so I've been discussing and looking at different sort of successful models in the region and seeing that like on a 30 year time horizon of constant engagement around incentives for biodiversity and soil and land use work a lot better. And so I know earlier we talked about the importance of not operating on like grant cycles and all this sort of thing. To answer your question about prioritization, if you think about the governance regime being fragmented and the finance regime being fragmented, how can we use that as a resource or an asset? And that's to think about that sometimes overlap of different funding sources, right, actually helps to drive and build capacity because when one falls out or one terminates, you have that kind of repetition. And so sort of like fetishizing efficiency, right, in contexts of a fragmented system are not necessarily the appropriate value to drive this. So if we really do care about bottom-up and community-engaged things, we need to be thinking about the whole set of institutional structures, how we can embed that communication of those bottom-up values, preferences, and interests, and then see them reflected. And then the last thing I'll note is that's an iterative process. And we all know this, but it's not just at the start of an intervention. It's continuously, are the assessment mechanisms we're using in the intervention also bringing in folks along the process? And then also assessing whether something was successful or not afterwards and taking stock. So we really have to think about how institutions are better or worse in terms of being set up for that sort of thing. So hopefully that answers your question.

Hello, thank you for a very interesting panel, but I have a question to those who could answer. And it's about war-affected communities. when the biodiversity completely destroyed, when the communities might be displaced and then return and they have also traumas. And what knowledge and practices could be used to lead this to organize this biodiversity sort of restoration and restoration of people-nature relations in such communities?

Thank you for that important question. I do not feel that I am highly qualified to answer it, but I know that there was a very interesting session yesterday on peace building and nature restoration, and it included some dialogue on rights of nature approaches. Perhaps that is the one suggestion that I would make, which is to start building back community connections through the lens of nature, which can sometimes be very helpful when there have been conflict situations or ongoing conflict situations. However, I feel I wish you had been at that session yesterday and perhaps you can speak with some of the speakers who were there. I'm happy to talk to you afterwards who would have a much deeper insight than an expertise than myself. Thank you.

Yeah, I'll say a couple of things quickly, which is in the Nexus assessment, one of the things we drew attention to is conflict as a major driver of biodiversity loss that we need more attention to. So thank you for raising this question. I personally work in Vietnam, a place that is very much associated with environmental degradation as a result of conflict. I've done a lot of field work there. And so one of the things that we know from that conflict 50 years ago is that these scars are deep and long-lasting, and they need effective addressing over the long term. And when that doesn't happen, we still see the impacts many years later. And so the direct biodiversity restoration approaches that build in livelihoods after conflict are 100% needed. And so I would say one of the We talked about the rights of nature movement. I would also note that there is a stop ecocide movement, which has a lot of parallels, which is trying to establish within various courts the fact that when we do see biodiversity loss and so forth during conflict, there's often not a restitution mechanism in our current legal regime. And that's certainly what happened in Vietnam. There was no legal recourse to get any sort of restoration funding after the war. So if we can work on that, that can help support financially some of the peace-building exercises that can lead to that restoration that you were indicating. So I would highlight that as a really important area to look at as well. Thank you, Sam.

And I'm going to request--.

Yeah, well, I'm agree with this question about-- your question hasn't been addressed correctly. in the world because communities who have been affected by conflict, they're mostly affected because of the territories they got, they belong, and the resources in those territories. So when we are talking about resources to work with the communities about reassembled communities, work with communities about mental health community mental health. This is not something that you find easily in investment around the world on these discussions, because about the communities, you got the essential, and the essential it is maybe, I don't know, housing, rebuilding of communities physically, but not rebuilding the communities spiritually. And the spiritual matters with this community. So, you know, Colombia is a country in internal conflict, and people have been many times take off the territories. The question is not if they can get back, but get back to what, exactly? And I think this is not a subject addressed correctly until now. And I think in this kind of discussions, we can also bring the topic, for example, to the COP, for example, for this conference, but also to the conscience of what is going on with these communities in conflict and why the resources, the main reason of the reason they cannot get back. and they cannot be restored in the communities. Thank you.

Thank you. We have time maybe for just one more question. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

Thank you. So just to respond to the gentleman from Tunisia, my colleague and I were looking this up and zooming in on Tunisia. But for the human industrial index that I showed, that models human impact using things like built environment, crop lands, nighttime lights, and roads. So when we're looking at Tunisia in particular, what we're seeing as the areas of really high impact are around Tunis and around the road network that comes out from Tunis. And we're happy to go and look at this in more detail with you. But I think what I want to point out here is the power of a map to raise this type of conversation and to have discussions across stakeholders about what it's showing that is correct and that reflects local context and what might not be quite right. And it's a tool then to create that dialogue to actually take action around these issues. So I will hand it back to Sunita.

Awesome, thank you. Hi, I'm Zora from University of Toronto.

One of you said that the university have the crucial role in connecting people and sectors. I'm wondering if you can give me some examples, like now that we are going back to our university, how we can guide our university to just actually take an active role and not just being passive and like, yeah, so that would be great, thanks.

I can speak to some of the experience that I have working with the delegation in California. But one of the things that I think if we are academic researchers, that, I mean, those of us in the room are probably the self-selecting group that are more oriented towards this, but not to assume that you know what policymakers need and that the things that they need are the things that you think are important. And so I think that there needs to be much more in terms of the interface of a kind of knowledge share. So whether that's embedding yourself within the context of the policy engagement spaces that you want to be in, whether that's formally or informally, in my case, it's just showing up and asking what do you need, right, and then trying to galvanize resources across the institutions. The other thing is to be able to... And this comes with also doing good interdisciplinary work, to do the work for people about the things that you want to be communicating that you do think are important. So don't assume that there's that kind of background context or background knowledge. And oftentimes, we're, of course, entrenched experts. And things that we think are overly obvious or overly simple are, in fact, not necessarily because we're using different kinds of language. So I think bridging across that language divide, showing up and asking, what do you need? and how can we help? And that also to recognize that the pace of research often doesn't match the pace of political need. And we all know that this is a challenge that we're facing. And so how can we build on past volumes of work that we have, but be able to be nimble enough to respond to the needs of the challenges that policymakers are coming to us with? And so I would encourage all of us to be thinking about the different ways you can kind of move outside and between your academic institution And then also just to remember on a specific biodiversity answer on this, that our institutions themselves are sites of biodiversity implementation. And so, and I'm happy to talk to folks about this after if they want to talk about it, but how we can understand implementing the GBF in the context of our academic institutions and knowing we're embedded in communities as well. So how are you breaking down that town versus gown divide and how are you being responsive to the needs, speaking of bottom up, not just to policy makers, but of local decision makers and communities as well and how do you lower that barrier of contact and I'll just say the maybe I don't know controversial part out loud but maybe this doesn't look good you know for your metrics for tenure or your career stuff right so a lot of it is also thinking a lot more expansively about our role even if the institutions that we are in as academics don't necessarily have the metrics to value your work in the academic context as well hope that wasn't too controversial.

In five seconds, living labs have been a really important way for universities to bridge. We've got people in this room. Go talk to Osamu, who has done this in Japan. Take advantage of lots of us have worked on living labs. It's a great model.

Can I have five seconds, too? I just want to reemphasize everything that Simona said and say that at the UN Development Program, we're really involved in a lot of that work to bridge between the scientists and the academics and the governments and translate across those two different stakeholder groups.

Thanks everyone. Thank you all. Great panel. Great perspectives. There's lunch that's being provided outside, so please go. But there's another, there is? Okay, sorry, I jumped the gun. I think there's another panel. before lunch. Anyway, you will get instructions from the Secretariat. But thank you, everyone, for sticking around and for the great conversation. There should be more conversations. Please reach out to all of them who are here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, we made it in time.

No, we still.

Very good. Thank.

You for organizing us.

We could have it in time.

We would have it in time. Your session is right now.

I got to go over there.

Okay. Así es.

Play all songs of the Kapil Sharma Show.

Play all songs of the Kapil Sharma Show.

Please take a seat. We are going to start with the next session on mainstreaming and ocean governance. And it's my pleasure to introduce Pamela Castillo from WCS, who is going to be moderating the session. So please take a seat.

2, 2, 1, 2. Good afternoon. Welcome to mainstreaming and ocean governance session. My name is Pamela Castillo. I'm former deputy minister of environment of Costa Rica and currently the global director of 30 by 30 Marine Program at Wildlife Conservation Society. It is a pleasure to moderate this discussion at such an important moment for global biodiversity governance. Let me start with a simple reflection. The ocean is connected, but our governance systems remain fragmented. Marine species move across borders, oceans, currents connect ecosystems, countries, and communities. Yet our policies, institutions, and management system often operate separately. With the BBA agreement now in force, and as we assess progress on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, we have an important opportunity to strengthen how we govern and how we protect ocean. Today, we will explore how to better connect science, policy, and action from the high seas to the coastal communities. We have six excellent speakers bringing different perspectives from international agreements and scientific research to regional cooperation and practical conservation. I invite our speakers to focus not only on challenges, but also on solutions, lessons that can help accelerate implementation. And with that, it's my pleasure to introduce to our first speaker, Charlotte Salpin, from the UN BBNJ Secretariat. Charlotte will introduce the global context of ocean biodiversity governance. With the BBNJ agreement now in force, the challenge is moving from international commitments to effective implementation. Charlotte, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Pamela, and it's a pleasure to be here with you. Just a little bit of background on myself. I'm Senior Legal Officer at the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea of the Office of Legal Affairs of the UN, which currently acts as the interim secretariat for the BBNJ Agreement. And I wish to thank the organizers for the invitation to join this panel. So As we would know, and I think there's a slide that's going to come up in a second, but I'll just say that obviously, hopefully, as we all know, thanks to its biodiversity, the ocean that sustains food security and livelihoods, regulates the climate, and supports an extraordinary diversity of life. So maintaining these functions requires integrating biodiversity considerations into decisions across sectors. This is obviously central to target 14 of the KMGBF and supports also targets one and five, which I believe guide this session. So in this presentation, I've been asked to provide an overview of the ocean biodiversity governance framework that supports this. Sorry, which one? Oh, this one. Let's see, this is working. So let me begin while we're trying to fix this. Let me begin with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS, which is often referred to as the constitution, thank you, for the ocean. It sets out the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out as is actually annually recognized by the UN General Assembly. and that includes obviously activities to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity. The Convention currently has 172 parties, including the European Union, and I should note that UNCLOS embodies an integrated approach. Its preamble recognizes that the problem of ocean space are closely related and must be considered as a whole. So cooperation obviously helps give effect to this integrated approach. Apologies, this is a little bit dry, but I think it's quite important to recall that UNCLOS establishes the various maritime zones in the ocean with different rights, jurisdiction, and duties of states in these zones. So we do have zones that are within national jurisdiction, and those includes the internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and the continental shelf. And they're a continuum from the land out to the sea in that order. Areas beyond national jurisdiction comprise the high seas and the area with a capital A, which is the international seabed area, and they're highlighted in yellow on this slide. So obviously, as Pamela noticed, marine species, ecological processes and pressures may cross jurisdictional boundaries, making cooperation and mainstreaming essential. UNCLOS also sets out rights and obligations of states with regard to different activities, including fishing, navigation, marine scientific research, as well as other activities. Part 12 of the convention is central to ocean biodiversity governance. While it does not specifically refer to biodiversity, it does establish the general obligation for states to protect and preserve the marine environment across parietine zones. It requires states to take all measures necessary to prevent, reduce, and control pollution of the marine environment from any source. And these measures must include measures necessary to protect and preserve rare or fragile ecosystems and the habitats of depleted, threatened or endangered species and other forms of marine life. The convention also addresses the introduction of alien species, monitoring and environmental impact assessments. So again, cooperation, including through a competent global and regional organization is integral to this framework. UNCLOS has three implementing agreements. The first one is the 1994 Part 11 Agreement, which relates to the exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in the international seabed area. The second is the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement, which addresses the conservation and management of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory species, and the BBNJ Agreement. All three agreements incorporate biodiversity considerations either directly, such as in the case of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, which requires states to protect biodiversity in the marine environment when conserving and managing fish stocks, and the BBNJ Agreement, and I will come back to this shortly. The Part XI Agreement aims to implement Part XI of UNCLOS, which includes a requirement for the International Seabed Authority to adopt appropriate rules, regulation and procedures for, among others, the prevention of damage to the flora and fauna of the marine environment from activities of exploration for and exploitation of mineral resources in the area. So the applicable legal framework also includes instruments which address a number of sectoral activities such as shipping, fishing, as well as more comprehensively, we also have a number of biodiversity instruments, as you would know being here, such as the CBD, as well as the CITES, CMS, Ramsar Convention, et cetera, all of which are obviously an integral component of the ocean governance framework for marine biodiversity. So the BBNJ agreement, which essentially builds on the framework of all the instruments that we have, aims to strengthen cooperation and coordination across the framework. As I mentioned, it's now the third implementing agreement to UNCLOS, and it has entered into force this year on 17 January and currently has 104 parties, with this number growing slowly but surely on an ongoing basis. The agreement, just again, a brief recap, only applies to areas beyond national jurisdiction, again, which are the high seas and the area. So the agreement does not apply to exclusive economic zones, the contiguous zone, the territorial sea, or the internal waters, even though it does include certain provisions that do require taking into account adjacent impacts in the zones under national jurisdiction. So in areas beyond national jurisdiction, several global and regional organizations have competence over different sectoral activities. The UN General Assembly provides the overall policy guidance, but it is not a management body. So before the BBNJ agreement was adopted, there was really no overall global cross-sectoral mechanism for coordinating the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity, particularly, for example, in addressing cumulative impacts. Gaps also remained concerning marine genetic resources and the establishment of marine protected areas. So the agreement was essentially adopted to address those gaps. So what is in the agreement? It addresses four key issues, namely marine genetic resources, including the fair and equitable sharing of benefits, area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, environmental impact assessments, and capacity building and the transfer of marine technology. It also addresses a number of cross-cutting issues, which I won't go into owing to time constraints. So the tools provided by the agreement, such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas or environmental impact assessments, can really help integrate biodiversity into decisions across sectors. The agreement also addresses ecological connectivity and the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification. It also includes provisions on the rights and participation of indigenous peoples and local communities and on gender balance and gender responsiveness. So this is really a wide-ranging, very comprehensive and inclusive agreement that has been adopted. I should note that science, since we're in the Science Policy Forum, and related terms are mentioned over 100 times in the agreement, which really demonstrates the extent to which the agreement will rely on scientific data, information and knowledge for its effective implementation. So a critical part of the agreement is strengthening cooperation. So while the agreement provides that it must be interpreted and applied in a manner that does not undermine relevant instruments, frameworks and bodies and promotes coherence and coordination with them. parties to the agreement are required to cooperate and to endeavor as appropriate to promote the objectives of the agreement in decision making under relevant instruments, frameworks, and bodies. So this is really quite far reaching because this essentially means that a party to the BBNJ agreement will have to promote the objectives of the agreement when participating in decision making in, for example, regional fisheries management organizations or at the International Maritime Organization. So, in terms of institutional arrangements, the agreement establishes a conference of the parties and several subsidiary bodies, which are listed here on the slide. It also establishes a secretariat and a clearinghouse mechanism. These institutional arrangements obviously will support the implementation and cooperation with relevant instruments, frameworks and bodies. In terms of next steps, before I conclude, the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties will be convened from 11 to 22 January next year at UN headquarters in New York. That meeting, while not delving into substantive matters, is expected to make critical decisions for the future implementation of the agreement on the substantive parts that I've highlighted, because it will make the necessary institutional, procedural, and governance decisions. To conclude, I would note that also the COP, sorry, before I conclude, will, among others, have before it a draft decision on cooperation with relevant instruments, frameworks, and bodies, which of course will be critical again in ensuring coherence in the global ocean governance frameworks that I have just outlined. So to conclude, effective implementation of the international legal framework supported by science, cooperation will really be central to mainstream biodiversity across ocean sectors. And I believe the regional experiences and the partnerships that will be discussed in this session can help inform efforts to integrate biodiversity considerations into planning and decision making across sectors. Thank you.

Thank you, Charlotte, for setting the global complex governance context. Our next speaker, Radhika from the National University of Singapore, will explore the connections between blue carbon, seascape connectivity, and coastal resilience. Her presentation will help us connect global policies with the realities of coastal ecosystems and communities. Radhika, welcome, and it's over to you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you so much for having an early career share their perspective and research, uh, to global policy making. So with that, let's get started. I did not want to assume that since we are in Armenia, maybe there are many people who are not familiar with coastal ecosystems. So to understand that, I want you to imagine a wave starting from the ocean, going towards the land, and it's starting from the ocean, it meets a seagrass, a tidal flat, and a mangrove on its way before it reaches the land. So the ecosystems I'll be talking about are these frontline ecosystems that protect us from the impacts of the sea, the waves, and the And these ecosystems are also houses of various biodiversity that live on their mud, underwater, or in their complex roots and shoot systems. So all the policy and science we do and talk about in this room directly impact the lives of these ecosystems and the livelihoods of the communities that live around them. With that, for all the things that I'm going to talk about today, I want us to remember one thing, that everything along the sea is connected, and it's connected by the tide that goes in and goes out with the activity or the forces of the moon. So when the tide is going in from the sea to the land, and when it's retreating from the land towards the sea, it's mixing the processes and functions of these ecosystems. So the impact we make on one side or on one ecosystem translates to other ecosystems. So with that understanding, let me begin with the good news. The good news is that the efforts of conservationists, policymakers, and scientists over the past couple of decades has resulted in a net increase in mangrove area since 2010. However, there are a lot of pressures along these areas that still persist, like impacts from sea level rise, cyclones, and also destructive extraction in these areas. So the question I ask with you in this session today is, what does this mean for ecosystem linkages, protection, and adaptation, along with governance? While we can't answer this question in the next seven minutes, I will give you some case studies that help us understand how weakening coastal resilience impacts these ecosystems, and how does the global biodiversity framework and the Paris Agreement can come and play a role in their protection. So let me take you to my most favorite part of the world, the Sundarbans, which is one of the largest mangrove forests located between India and Bangladesh. And this is the only mangrove forest where a tiger lives. So the tiger here is more like a swimmer than a forest navigator. the Sundarbans, because of a lot of climatic impacts and direct anthropogenic pressures, the coastline has become resilient, not the coastline has lost its resilience. So we know mangroves as shoreline protectors, but what you see on the screen is in the Sundarbans, the mangroves have become weak and they are no longer able to protect the shoreline. This is what happens when we are not protecting the ecosystem. The ecosystem loses its resilience and thus is replaced by concrete infrastructures. So when mangroves can no longer protect the shoreline, people have developed concrete sea walls along the shore in order to protect the villages from the impacts of the sea. Now imagine putting a heavy concrete slab on a very soft, mushy, wet mud. I think all of us can understand what will happen. The concrete slab would cave in, break and fall off. This happens because the concrete seawall is not meant for that ecosystem. The mangroves are meant to be protecting that ecosystem. So in the image, in the satellite images above, you see over the course of 14, 15 years, many embankments have come in

replaces the mangroves, yet they are not able to provide the protection to the shoreline. This transition from green to grey has also weakened the ecosystem, that the ecosystem is not able to give back the services it used to provide. And thus, the losing resilience of the coastal ecosystem, along with already Economic vulnerability that occurs in the community, like lack of government support, lack of livelihood opportunities, is not only weakening the ecosystem but also the local communities who live around that. Another issue that occurs in the Sundarbans is that it's divided by a political border between India and Bangladesh. Hence, the governance of these ecosystems are also varied. But a tree, a river, and a tiger is not going to follow these political borders. So the management here really needs to look at this from a transboundary integrated system and also account for the communities that live around it. the more information about my paper is on the screen, which will follow all my slides, so that I don't delve too much about the methods, but get the message right across to you. The second part, or the second case study I want to present is about the Global Biodiversity Framework. We all know the framework promises countries to protect 30% of their biodiversity by 2030. So the question I asked was, can we really protect 30% of the mangrove ecosystems by 2030? For that, I analyzed where are our biodiversity hotspots for mangroves all around the world. And I combine the biodiversity hotspots with the mitigation and adaptation services those ecosystem provides and the threats on those ecosystem that give me a list of countries which are high priority for conservation then I looked at their nbsabs which were submitted for the framework and I looked at if these countries are actually acknowledging the protection of mangroves in their andabs and if they're also able to scientifically if the countries also have the scientific potential to protect these ecosystems by 2030. So we are dealing with two issues. One is the science. Does the science support mangrove protection by 2030? And do the countries include that protective services in their NBSAPs? And the countries highlighted in stars, Cameroon, Colombia, and Tanzania, are only three countries which can actually establish new protected areas and protect their mangroves in the short term. The countries that can improve their management and protect mangroves in the short term is only Gabon, and it also includes that target in their NBSAPs. Finally, the countries that can protect the mangroves in the short term include those targets in their NBSAPs. and can do so in the short term by 2030 is only Colombia and Panama. So my research showed that including targets in NBSAPs is one thing, having the scientific capability to protect these ecosystems in the short term is another thing. So if we have 120 mangroves in countries in the world, only about 30 countries have mangrove significant, loss of mangroves that's significant, and only 11 countries have the potential to actually manage these losses in the short term. However, only five countries include such short-term management targets in their NBSAPs. So you can see a huge gap between science and management and the targets in the global biodiversity framework. So I'm sad to conclude that at least for mangrove ecosystems, it is looking really unfortunate that we might not be able to meet the framework's target of protecting mangroves by 2030. To improve our actions now, we need to have quantitative targets that look at both short-term and long-term protection, and not just at the short-term 2030 target. The last couple of slides I have is to understand how does the Paris Agreement play a role in protecting coastal ecosystems. So I read all the NDCs, all the greenhouse gas inventory reports, and all the national communications so that you guys don't have to, to conclude how are these ecosystems included in the national targets. So my one-line conclusion is that developing countries, which is the non-Annex I countries, they are doing a lot more with including these ecosystems in their as compared to the developed countries. So the developed countries has a lot more to learn from them. But more interestingly, we would assume they would have quantitative targets on management or carbon sequestration, but they actually have more supporting targets, which means the countries are writing in their NDCs that we need more data, we need better policy to utilize mitigation services from these ecosystems. And the Paris Agreement does have the mechanisms to support data and policy for coastal ecosystems and for countries to improve their data and policy so that they can form management targets. However, we are currently only covering about 14% of the mitigation potential these ecosystems provide, so all the countries can really ramp up the inclusion of these ecosystems and setting up targets in their NDCs under the Paris Agreement. While we are thinking about these global policies, I would like to end by highlighting that small island developing states, which are crucial for including these ecosystems in their mitigation targets, there are a lot of issues within local governance that needs to be resolved first before we move on to global governance. And if you have to take something in the very few seconds left for me to speak, I would say we need to move beyond one that an ecosystem provide and look at it from a kind of seascape connectivity approach. We need to look at how these ecosystems provide not just mitigation or adaptation, but also biodiversity and social value services and combine different kinds of agreements at local and governance and local and global scale to really protect them and have positive actions on the ground. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you for phrasing how policy coherence should look like and how ambition actually needs to take into the realities on the field. So our next speaker, Julian Esteban, his presentation focus on six policy recommendations for marine conservation that better reflect the dynamic nature of the ocean. Our ocean is constantly changing. Our conservation policies need to respond to that reality. And with that, give me one second to change of slide.

This is so complicated.

The right screen. What presentation you need?

What is going? What's the name? I need this one. Is this one, yes. Okay, so hello everyone. Thank you for coming. Good afternoon. Thanks for the International Union of Biological Science for having me. My name is Julian. I am a researcher in Paris and I am a physicist working between marine conservation and policy frameworks. And today I have the pleasure to present a paper that was part of my doctoral dissertation about dynamic marine protected areas. And to start about this new concept about dynamic marine protected areas, I would like to mention the core paradox of marine conservation. We have oceans that are dynamic systems characterized by fluid motions and processes like ocean circulation, stratification, biochemical cycles, and species distributions vary across space-time, and depth. However, those processes are not part of the policy frameworks or policy tools that we have for conservation. And if we talk about marine ecosystems, they are complex due to their composition of multiple subsystems interconnected by the fluidity of water. So we know the connection about different ecosystems because of water, but still it's very complex to translate that specific characteristic in policy implementation. In that sense, we have area-based tools with fixed and in many cases, on changing geographical boundaries, primarily defined in two-dimensional surface terms. And here, it's very important to mention these two-dimensional characteristics because oceans and marine ecosystems are three-dimensional ecosystems. Still, in conservation approach, we are not considered this three-dimensional approach. And the problem with this approach, the two-dimensional one and the static one, is that it prioritizes spatial demarcation while frequently overlooking habitat distribution, temporal variability, horizontal and vertical connectivity, and ecosystem functionality. This is very important regarding oceans because, for example, about vertical connectivity, vertical connectivity is still not considered in policy implementation. And when conservation measures are designed and implemented as fixed two-dimensional areas between a three-dimensional and temporarily variable zone, their ecological representativeness and long-term effectiveness may be compromised. So the solution that we are proposing, that I proposed during my PhD thesis, was to develop dynamic marine protected areas. And to do that, I am first of all proposing a first shift from area-based conservation to ecosystem-based conservation, meaning that the limitation of the marine protected area should be based on the ecological representativeness and the ecological distribution, and that should be the main characteristics to define marine protected areas. But additionally, we need to move from surface or two-dimensional conservation to volumetric or three-dimensional conservation. And finally, if we are able to implement those chief, we can propose dynamic marine protected areas as an alternative to current conservation schemes. And here, I am not gonna explain the mathematical framework for dynamic MPAs because it's very complex, but the most important about this figure, about this illustration, is to show the comparison between static marine protected areas and dynamic ones. The main principle of a dynamic marine protected area is that basically we are following specific characteristics of the oceans, in this case, plankton, because plankton provide different ecosystem services that are absolutely important for ocean conservation. And in that sense, ocean also, sorry, plankton is also important because plankton is transported by currents, horizontally speaking and also vertically speaking. And if we follow this movement of plankton in function of the currents, we can design marine protected areas that are gonna be volumetric, but also are gonna change the size, but also are going to move. And we are going to be able to calculate, for example, the velocity in function of the different seasons. So to show a little bit, I hope that this is going to-- no. So this is a simulation. Unfortunately, it's not working. The idea with the simulation was to mention or to show all the different marine protected areas that I identified in the Mediterranean Sea. And in this simulation, the idea was to calculate how the marine protected areas that I am proposing can move between the different national jurisdictions of the Mediterranean Sea. This is very important because this approach understands that oceans are in constant motion. And additionally, we need to implement tools that are following this motion. And this is also necessary in terms of conservation because in some cases, different jurisdictions, they have different approach for conservation. But if we follow the most important features of the ocean, in this case, based on plankton concentration, we will be able to improve the effectiveness. And in this context, and I am explaining this framework because based on this, we propose different policy recommendations that we also proposed during the COP16 of biodiversity in Cali, Colombia, two years ago. The first one that is the most evident, that is the integration of ocean dynamics into conservation policies to incorporate temporal variability, spatial flexibility, and volumetric and energy exchanges that we consider a very important policy in the sense that a current approach for marine conservation are based on terrestrial ecosystems. When we analyze the definitions that we are using for marine protected areas, it's exactly the same definition for protected areas of terrestrial ecosystems. And this is a problem because we are creating a mismatch between the ecological reality of marine ecosystems and the tool that we are using for conservation. So we consider that it's important to include ocean dynamics into conservation policies. Additionally, we are promoting, we want to support global marine conservation strategies. And to do that, we are proposing to address global biodiversity threats through complementary measures, scientific innovation, and marine microbiome research. This is very important in the sense of marine ecosystems, regarding plankton ecosystems, And to do that, we are proposing dynamic marine protected areas based on planktonic ecosystems and specific taxonomic groups of plankton. And to do that, it's necessary to do microbiome research to be able to identify biodiversity richness and not continue focusing in charismatic species or emblematic species that are also very important, but we are creating a scientific bias in conservation measures. that we need to reduce to improve conservation measures. Additionally, we propose a legal representation of marine ecosystem integrity, meaning that we Using data-driven ecological modeling, we are going to be able to define ecosystem integrity and then establish measurable criteria for legal protection of those aspects that are absolutely important in terms of marine ecosystems. Other recommendations that we are proposing, it's about the integration of functional and phylogenetic diversity that in this case we are proposing to use both to combine ecological functions, but also evolutionary history. That this is very important in terms of conservation, of marine conservation, because we need to improve the knowledge about oceans, but also we need to continue with the evolutionary history and ecological data of marine ecosystems. Additionally, we are proposing to advance marine ecosystem services valuation because currently the majority of ecosystem services valuation are focused on carbon sequestration. That is a very important ecosystem service provided by planktonic ecosystems, but it's not the only one. And in that sense, we need to develop innovative and context-specific evaluation methods, integrating ecological economic modeling and participatory approach to include the majority of ecosystem services and even ecosystem disservices provided by marine ecosystems and especially for planktonic ecosystems. And finally, we are also proposing to develop intellectual property rights for marine ecosystems, meaning that all the profits and benefits associated with marine ecosystems can also move to conservation and to support conservation. And to conclude, if you want to read more about the policy recommendations, you can Google the paper that is fully available. And we have a very detailed explanation of the policy recommendations, but also about the approach of dynamic marine protected areas. Thank you for listening.

Look, your mouse on the next screen.

Thank you. for reminding us that MPAs as well need to adapt to the realities and challenges and bringing that integral perspective on how as well bring new financial mechanisms to dynamic MPAs. Our next speaker, Sean Peters, will introduce the Living High Seas Initiative and its partnership for ocean biodiversity. Effective ocean governance requires cooperation across countries, institutions, and sectors. Sean, the floor is yours.

First of all, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting GIZ to contribute today some of the first lessons learned and recommendations from the Living High Seas Partnerships for Ocean Biodiversity. It is good to see all of you here. You are delaying your lunch. That means you share the same passion that we have for the coming COP 1 of the BBNJ. If I go back in time, I was sitting in a room in Fiji in 2011. It was the first CBD regional workshop for the South Pacific, the Western South Pacific, to determine EPSAs. And we worked on a scientific perspective and basis with colleagues from all Pacific Island countries and came up with 26 EPSAs for the southern West Pacific. And while that was an achievement in 2011, we were all worried because we had now determined where those EPSAs were, but we had very limited tools to turn these EPSAs into something that could be effectively managed and protected. So now we have the BBNJ, now we are looking forward to COP1, but the big question from our perspective is how to fill BBNJ process with life So in that regard, one of the lessons learned from those EPSA workshops was that at the time there was very limited scientific knowledge on those EPSAs. And we had colleagues from the Pacific Island countries in the room that commented that they did not even have that kind of knowledge about areas in their EZs. And so they asked for capacity building efforts to assist them in marine spatial planning within the EZ, while we invited them to discuss with us what we could do to highlight and identify areas beyond the EZ. So capacity building, I think, is still a very large topic in that regard, but we see a lot of opportunities when it comes to coordination and cooperation mechanisms. Charlotte highlighted the different agreements. So we see a big opportunity to jointly work on quality standards and global guidance to learn from each other. But we see also challenges. When I visited the Federated States of Micronesia and looked with them at proposed areas, we talked to the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. We talked about deep sea mineral potential. And We are very hopeful when it comes to high seas biodiversity governance, but it will be a very challenging and complex undertaking. And so in that regard, GIZ was very, very happy following the PrepComs to have inspiring conversations with several countries that formed alliances of pioneers, the BBNJ first movers, the High Ambition Coalition. And so we ended up working with six countries on the global level, Ecuador, Chile, Senegal, Indonesia, and the Federated States of Micronesia, on ideas how first efforts could look like. We were very lucky to get funding from the German government under the International Climate Initiative and the Minderu Foundation in Australia, and we hope to work with those six countries until 2031. In the discussion with the countries and in the context of the PrepComs, There were several EPSAs that came up as potential areas for initial alliance discussions, consultations. Those are areas in the Pacific, in the Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, and also the Western Pacific. They are here on the map. The question really was how, beginning with individual partner countries, we could support regional efforts where these partner countries could start and lead alliances of countries in the region. And in order to do that, we developed a partnership ourselves. So GIZ worked very closely together with the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative, GOBI, and IUCN on a concept how to support those six countries in their efforts. The role of GOBI really is to see how we can make better use of data and information that we have that are often not accessible to the countries, but available on a global basis. In many side events on this COP, we had exactly this discussion. We have by now a bewildering diversity of tools, platforms, databases, but how to make best use of them is really an interesting question. And Gobi is very passionate to assist in that regard. GIZ, we have colleagues on the ground in these countries that work with the governments, with the different stakeholders on the ground, with indigenous representatives on nationally driven processes. And IUCN is very keen to see what we can learn from these six countries or six growing alliances when it comes to the global level. I would like to end by highlighting that on one hand, personally as a marine scientist and in this context today, I am very enthusiastic. I see that our scientific knowledge when it came to the ABSAs led to policy momentum now with the BBNJ that hopefully will assist us to maintain the biodiversity in the high seas. how to enhance these cross-country approaches. That is an interesting question. I have worked in the Pacific and Southeast Asia for the last 30 years. I see some really good examples. I also work with the six core triangle countries that have shown here in several side events what they are doing. They are forming a task force on BBNJ. So I think we have good examples. But I also think, while I agree with everything that Julian said, that we have to really also embrace the different forms of use that are undertaken. And I think there's one particularly good example, the parties to the Nauru Agreement. Under the WCPFC, several countries in the Pacific developed an approach that is very noteworthy because they decided to provide access to licenses for fishing in the EEZs. by proposing to exclude fishing in a high seas pocket. And so that, in my view, was one of the first examples, actually, for ABMJ level ABMTs, if you want. So we have interesting examples, we can build on them, and I hope we can utilize BBNJ really as with growing momentum for the next years to see how we can provide the right framework conditions. It will not be easy, I have also been on a panel for several years on deep sea mineral context in the Pacific. So it will be a controversial process, but I have seen partnerships, friendships growing on the sidelines. So in that regard, I'm personally very optimistic. Thank you for attention today. If you have questions, please see me and we can see how we can grow a partnership. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Sean. We have been seeing how these amazing presentations, wave of presentations from frameworks that are based in science and the need of adaptation as currents of the sea, it requires good partnerships that can adapt as well as the time is asking for. There's no action without partnership and collective leadership. And with that, I would like to then go to the coast again, to the people. how these sometimes high-level discussions, how these targets actually are implemented with people on the ground. And with that, I have the pleasure to introduce Marcela Gutierrez.

Okay, sorry. Good morning. Thank you so much for being here during lunch, as the previous speaker says. I'm very excited to hear all of this and very excited to talk about the last mile logistics, or the last kilometer logistics, I would say. As I mentioned, as was mentioned, my background is in ocean conservation and what we now call ocean justice, which is that convergence of environmental justice and conservation. But my previous background in previous life was actually fishing logistics. So pardon me if I bring all of that idea of those last miles and how we get things to there. I have, I don't have slides for you because life, but I can reference them later. And so first of all, thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation. I think it's extremely important that we talk about how things get done and how the public actually buys in. I would love to live both as a person and as a mother in a world where scientific papers and the best available science actually results in durable and instant policy change and more importantly, implementation. But unfortunately, that is not the case. So we are left here with the necessity to figuring out how actually that works. And so countries are tasked in this conversation with the enormous challenge of developing and implementing effective policies to address biodiversity loss. And in this process, you should all be deliberate and cautious, integrating obviously the best available sciences to the source and impacts of, on the sources and impacts of biodiversity loss, but more importantly, environmental justice. Now, what is environmental justice? Obviously, this is Marcella coming from a US focused the use of police, pardon me on that. Environmental justice was actually born as a remedy, right? So very important to this. If we talk about how there is a trend now to talk about everything as environmental justice, and the fact is that if everything is environmental justice, Nothing is environmental justice. So we need to talk about remedy relative to what the current schemes and systems have actually left behind. And so I will be quoting from two papers today. One of them is actually called Neglected, which is a UNEP paper that was tasked to us relative to exploring environmental justice implications of plastic pollution and how plastic production from source to waste actually deters the full and timely implementation of all the state of development goals. And I will tell you, when we first started that analysis, we thought we were going to be looking at maybe two or three of these goals, but unfortunately, it's actually around across all the 17. Another one is a legal paper that we published in, again, the US relative to coastal justice and an equity-focused view of 30/30 implementation. So for background, ASUL, the organization that I started 15 years ago, was actually born out of a failure of engagement and implementation relative to the agency. So I'm always thinking about how do we actually translate these fabulous ideas and policies and goals that you all so diligently create and how do we actually make them a reality? And so, you know, we need to talk about this here because I think that ocean, specifically ocean conservation, has had a historical problem relative to engagement. We do see much more robust ideas and participation in other places of conservation, but in ocean conservation, not just in the US, but in other places, we see a problem. So Azul was created to work with communities in the US, so Spanish-speaking communities. Because of this, many of the communities that we are working with are actually part of Latin American diaspora. And so we're working with folks that are actually able to do implementation and outreach, not just at the local level their local governments or the national level, that's with EU actors, but also with their countries of origins. And so I know for a fact that my country of origin, Mexico, is extremely interested in hearing what the diaspora in the global north is interested in, to the point where we have dedicated campaigns. And there's actually a possibility of creating dedicated direct voting representation in Congress right now, which I think El Salvador already has. So what we're dealing with here is that The communities that are the least responsible for the loss of biodiversity, the problems around pollution, et cetera, are the ones that are actually bearing the biggest brunt of this. And so, you know, talking to you as actors, we need to talk about, I do have some recommendations and I will share that later, but of the, pull it later, but Talking to you today as actors, again, we're looking at responsible governance and an expansive and creative use of your already existing policies. And why do I go back to that? It's because we've all been in the meetings, we've all been in the contact groups, and we know how long it takes to actually work with these brackets, the famous brackets. And the fact is that we have a significant amount of tools at our disposal relative to your national context that couldn't be dominated or interpreted in a creative way to actually implement some of these needs that we do have. And that means that we can start taking action today versus figuring out when our national governments can actually create these new policies, subnational governments or those global agreements. And so to you, I say that in my recommendations is that responsible governance must avoid community erasure. And this is a really big issue because I think that words, again, like environmental justice and community tend to be bandied about a little bit too loosely. And if we don't have the guidelines specific to this, then we are actually empowering people that are the most entrenched in power and systems to to actually take up these opportunities that should be available to the people that have been historically disenfranchised. And so we need to account for variance in community formation and racialization, ensure community ownership over processes and systems. And this sounds really exciting, right? This sounds very nice, but how do we get there? How do we get from here in Yerevan or Nairobi or other places, New York, to Like the people where I grew up in Tijuana, or the people where my mother grew up, or the folks in New York, or the people we work with in New Orleans, et cetera. And how do we actually provide that information, but more importantly, the on-ramps. Relative to this, this is more, I think, for us, the most exciting things. is that you need to make sure that we are creating those on-ramps and we are creating those points of engagement because the fact is that every time that I come to one of these meetings, people don't realize that in theory, they're actually open to the public. And this is something to hear for other folks also, even when their governance structures and other things. So my recommendation is, 'cause I wanted to make sure that I was brief on this and I can... share the two papers later are obviously, like I said, avoid community erasure, account for historical injustices and policy artifacts in the coastal and ocean zones. So if we don't know the harms, we cannot fix them. And I think this is one of the things that we rushed to do very quickly and affirmatively. A formatively enforced anti-discrimination civil rights law. So this is where I'm talking to you about the creative enforcement. We need to be looking at things that people may not realize are actually part of the ocean. This course is something that we took a lot of use for the creation of ocean just platforming in the US. And advanced creative and expensive. use of coastal legal authority. So again, ideally for me, you would all be looking at the anti-discrimination and those existing policy priorities, existing priorities. rearticulate what it means to integrate equity principles into policy. Access is not justice. Access is not meaningful engagement. Access is not get the job done. So just because things are available for people doesn't mean that they're actually making full use of them, that we're actually getting all the concepts that we should be getting, and they are having the ownership of that. So we need to make sure that we stop using access as a low entry point and also as some sort of checkoff box that think that the actual policies are being mainstreamed and obviously considering developing implementing curricula on environmental justice on ocean just in this case and not for the public only by the way but for your governments so I'm gonna cut it out I'm gonna finish here But I will say that this is the important part relative to making sure that you are looking at the last kilometer. How are people actually going from this form? How are people able to use these tools to use in their daily lives? Because one of the things that we forget is that sometimes as a global treaty, we could be actually helping folks with these tools to create accountability and push engagement in their local countries and their local communities and to create some of that power balance locally. Thank you.

Thank you, Monica, for reflecting on international conventions at the end is about the whole of the society and respecting dignity of everyone living in the coastlines. And for to continue doing this link between science and governance, I will, I would like to give the floor to the last speaker. So welcome, Pierre. You will do the connection of science and governance. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much. It's not easy to to be the last speaker because you are even uh hungrier than before uh but I will try to to be short so thank you very much for the organizer uh for the invitation to this session thank you for the the other speakers it was a very very interesting to to listen to all this project and uh all this uh investment uh under the the marine and ocean governance uh so um I will start by presenting my institution, the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, so the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. So as you can see, we are quite old, 400 years of history. So we were already trying to support a science-based decision-making process under the French monarchy. But It was working very well, so we decided to continue. And we are working at the crossroad of several activities. So, of course, we have a lot of biodiversity collection. So, collection, we are conducting fundamental and applied research, both in natural, social, and human science. We are also providing scientific expertise. It's particularly why we are here, participating to these multilateral processes. We are offering educational opportunities, and we are, of course, disseminating scientific knowledge to all audiences. So saying that shows that a treaty like BBNJ is of direct interest to us, both as an organization with expertise in marine biodiversity and as user also of, for example, marine genetic resources for collection and research work. So particularly, more particularly, we are conducting marine exploration campaign. We are collecting specimen to better understand, describe, and document marine biodiversity. We are working in French seas, but also sometimes in IC. So we are very aware of the new regulation under the BBNJ treaty. So objective of this campaign, collecting marine organisms, sequencing the genomes, enriching scientific collection, generating new knowledge about biodiversity. So BBNJ agreement, well, you already know that, a new treaty to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. And among the four pillars of BBNJ agreement, so it was great to hear about other pillars of the BBNJ agreement, is the one concerning the marine genetic resources and benefit sharing, so it's very important actually because we need to anticipate the implementation of the agreement, particularly for the access to the marine genetic resources, but also to ensure that we are in compliance with the new regulation and also being aware of the need of a fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising for the use of marine genetic resources. So there are new challenges arising with the BBNJ agreement. How can we adapt actually to this new treaty? So this kind of convention treaty have always a transformative impact actually on our activities. So we need to be very aware of that. It will transform our way to do research actually in the IC. And so based on that, we launched actually a new project with a French partner, IFREMER, which is one of the leading institution regarding marine research. Our objective is to anticipate actually the implementation of this treaty by developing practical approach to ensure that marine research activities are in compliance with the new requirements. So we want actually to help marine research continue as before, but with this addition of the compliance on the BBNJ Treaty. And for that, we have something that could help us. 10 years learning experience with actually the Nagoya Protocol in the CBD. It's not exactly the same regime. We are not in a bilateral regime. We are in a multilateral regime in the case of BBMG, but we can learn about what we already have done during for the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol. And so, Based on this experience, we want to work with scientific institutions all around the world, actually. So it's also a call for you, if you want to participate to this project, to work with us, developing, actually, new tools for helping researchers complying with the BBNJ Treaty. So we will first, of course, listen. to the scientists. We want to identify actually clear solution, clear way to deal with the treaty compliance system. And we want also to test actually these tools afterwards. And then, but to inform of course the decision making process about actually what does it mean in practice? Because there are always a gap between what we want and what we envision actually writing actually the rules on what is going on in practice. So we want to fill this gap with this project. So conclusion, marine genetic resources are a crucial issue for scientific institution. So BBMG, of course, have a transformative impact on our activities. We need to anticipate this impact. We need to anticipate the need to comply to the new rules. And of course, we need to ensure that the freedom of scientific research is actually guaranteed also under the BBNJ agreement. It's the case, the agreement is stating very clearly that, but again, the gap between the rules and the practice need to be looked very closely. Thank you very much.

Thank you for just closing with how science as well is a challenge in implementation. So first of all, I would like to ask everyone a round of applause for these speakers who have presented today. Amazing. business studies and I think that the the center is still the same the ocean is connected that we need to adapt and our systems is still fragmented so I will like to open um that discussion with the panelists around first harmonization of policies and in that sense as well we have progressed and we have now BB and J on cop one coming in but From that experience and reflections, what has been the challenges? And if you have a success story on harmonizing international frameworks through regional platforms, and I'm seeing here some regional platforms from the Caribbean and national, at the national level, and maybe we can start with your reflections, Charlotte and Sean.

Thank you. I think one of the difficulties in harmonizing anything at the global level and perhaps at the regional level, so we focus on the global level, is really challenges in coordination at the national level. because the issue is often that you will have different agencies, ministries that will be responsible for negotiating or implementing instruments that have been adopted at the global level or that are actually negotiating those instruments. And while in some countries, national coordination works very well, you do have a common position which is consistent across the board. it is not always the case everywhere. So I think that's the primary place where we need to start supporting countries to establish the necessary mechanism, develop the necessary capacity to coordinate at the national level. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much for this question. It's a great question in the sense that I would agree with Charlotte. But in many ways, we should start from the national level. The reason why I was in Fiji 15 years ago when we determined these EPSAs was that I worked with five Pacific Island countries, and I call them rather large ocean states than small island states, in order to assist them with integrated marine spatial planning in the entire EZ. And I think that has much similarities to our BBNJ efforts right now. Initially, the German government was interested to support the establishment of new marine protected areas in those EEZs, but we sat down with the governments and we looked at true holistic integrated marine spatial planning efforts to make sure that those new marine protected areas were harmonized with the fishing interests, potential future deep sea mineral interests, and so on and so forth. And I think we learned a lot. And the first lesson learned was that when we analyzed the policies in those countries, It turned out that very few policy makers in environment, for example, looked into the tourism policies. Few tourism colleagues looked into forestry policies. When we looked what kind of policy mechanisms or regulations existed for delineating marine areas, we came up with 27, 30, 40 different mechanisms under different ministries. And that led to the realization also that when it comes to the international agreements, different colleagues represented those governments in those agreements. So yes, from the agreement's perspective, there was one state party, but those colleagues coming back did not share a harmonized national understanding of their potential future use of their marine resources. So in that regard, I think capacity building on the national level, working with the different ministries, the different sectors, is the first and very important step in order to then have the global agreements institutions around the table and I think integrated marine spatial planning can teach us quite a bit. At the time we supported those Pacific Island countries in bioregionalization on the EZ level to make sure that they considered truly representative MPA networks within the country. But when we did the modeling we went actually beyond the EZ. So for the southern West Pacific we created a bioregionalization, Maria Bega and colleagues, it's published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin if you're interested. And I think this is the way we have to go in line with Julian's recommendation, really looking into ecological recommendations, but also all these other sectors and interests to see how integrated marine spatial planning can also inform processes under the BBNJ. Thank you.

Thank you. I think that the ocean and if we recall.

Can you please switch off?

My groves and inside it's very complex because the ocean is affected for land sources as well. And so that remember and we can transition to the GBF and the mainstreaming biodiversity in the development agendas. But We have spoke the challenges of national governments and the need of setting probably new flexible institutions to attend that this diverse of agendas, but at the same time. There are regional conventions that play plays a very important role for the implementation of the GBF. Remember, target three needs to be well connected. And as Julian's presentation reflect on, that means MPA networks that go beyond that national challenges. So I would love to hear from the panelists what we have missed the opportunity for ocean conservation, working with intergovernmental platforms around the world and putting in the center the ocean nations.

Maybe I can get started with something. So when I was reviewing the Paris Agreement and what targets countries had submitted from coastal ecosystem, there was still a huge gap on data that the countries needed, which for me was surprising because we know that the global biodiversity framework exists. Prior to that, there was Kyoto Protocol, there was also REDD+ policies. So my question was, why haven't the data gap been filled yet? And from the science side, we use these global data sets all the time to create models and analysis. So why aren't these countries able to use it? So one reflection on the harmonization and also what have we missed. is how can we achieve multiple goals for the long term? For example, if in the Paris Agreement, a country mentions that we have mangroves, but we don't have maps of mangroves. So our goal for this 2030 NDC is that we want to map these ecosystems. International support comes, they get over this one small gap. Incrementally, they fill the next gap on how much carbon is stored. what adaptation services these has. And when the capacity development is happening, it's not happening just for that one mangrove patch. It's happening at the level within the country that the skills are transferable. We know that when, if I'm a forest department person, I get trained, I then move on to the next department. I don't pass on that skill to the next forest department representative. So how can we create a system when the international support and finance does come in, it comes in for the long term. And it develops the country and takes it to the next stage so that when we have the next international agreement, it doesn't have to go to scratch and fill this data gap and then fill this policy gap. So I think that's where one gap we can fill with harmonization and also with an integrated approach with multiple targets, achieving multiple targets at the same time.

Thank you. And I would like to invite all of here to, on Monday, there will be intergovernmental platforms that brings different governments together on how they are willing to join forces for having MSP at the regional level and start scaling MPA networks among them in the Ocean Pavilion, 9 p.m. Monday. Well, and we cannot have this panel without closing, even though that we have good news, are we bending the core for biodiversity loss in the marine realm? And if you can close your reflection with one main recommendation and a call to action to tackle this. Yeah, starting from that.

Can we ask you to keep just one mic on? Difficult question, but my take would be in relation actually with what we just discussed before, we need more synergies actually with all the the conservation policies that are already existing. And I think we are already working quite hard on that. So we can see that actually in the current negotiation on COP17. But also, if you have sometimes difficulty to sleep, you can read actually the BBMG treaty. And the synergies are everywhere, actually inviting parties that are ready to walk with all these instruments, et cetera. So I think, yes, it's the main challenge to be able to walk with all these instruments at the same time.

Yeah, from my perspective, my answer is very clear. This COP is inspiring. Many of the side events show the importance of SDG target 17 partnerships. So I think the question for me is, how can we form new creative partnerships to make data information more accessible to national institutions and colleagues, and how can those partnerships then jointly form alliances that go beyond national borders?

From my perspective, and to answer your question, I would like to distinguish between progress in conservation commitments and progress in biodiversity outcomes. That is totally different. So we have made progress about establishing marine protected areas and protected areas in general, and developing international agreements. Actually, we have many international agreements. However, this not necessary mean that we are reversing marine biodiversity loss. Actually, it's the opposite. When we look into, for example, the Living Planet Report, the IPBS, the outlook of biodiversity, we can see that monitored marine invertebrate populations have declined by an average of almost 60% between 1917 and 2022. And this is important to consider because in a way, My perception as a scientist is like in these platforms where we have delegations, scientists, NGOs, and many different delegations, is like we are doing a good job. But the reality for me is that we are not doing a good job. And that's my message. Because we can see how marine ecosystems continue just in these decreasing rates. And we are not doing enough effort. And we usually confuse increased conservation targets based on indicators, based on surface, but we are not measuring effectiveness. We are not measuring effectiveness in the way that actually we can do a comparison. We are not doing, for example, harmonization between the international agreements and the regional commitments, because it's very difficult for the regional, like approach, from a regional approach, to implement an international commitment. And then we have this huge uncertainty regarding effectiveness. And right now the main message is to increase coverage, but we are not thinking enough about effectiveness. That for me is more important to have effectiveness instead of have legal or paper parks, because we have a lot of paper parks. When we measure, for example, effectiveness regarding marine protected areas, we can see that the majority of them, they don't have management plans. That means that they are legally established, but they don't have any measure to analyze if they are working or not. So I would say that the fundamental question is not only how much of the ocean we protect, but whether our conservation strategies are effectively protecting marine biodiversity. And my message is like how we need to continue with this effort, but also we need to realize that the effort is not enough.

So the short answer is we're not acting anywhere near fast enough. We are not yet bending that curve. And as the previous speaker so eloquently said it, we don't want to be staying in those paper parks and reports and ideas that get stuck in somebody's shelf. At the same time, doing this kind of work requires finding the sort of like spaces of hope, right? Like these glimmers that kind of get you to keep going. So for us, we do have that proof that things are changing, at least at the public level. And I keep highlighting this because like nature does not need, do not need people the other way around. And if people don't take action, then that doesn't work and we don't move towards that. So we do have, through several pollings that we've done in the US with Latino voters, so people of Spanish speaking describe themselves as Latino, of which 20 million voters in the U.S., by the way, are actually by national citizens of other Latin American countries, myself included. You do have this idea, a possibility to actually engage internationally from the same regional perspective. That's something that we've been doing very strongly relative to having our polls and seeing the actual proof there that at some point, to describe this. There was a poster that had looked at ocean protection as an actual case study relative to Latinos environmental ideas in the US because the attitudes were so dismay, not because they didn't care, but because they didn't actually know. And so he went back 25 years later to see how that had changed. And the fact is that we had gone from being completely unaware to actually going to telling us that 70, 75% of people in the US are, you know, are actually in support of the 30/30 goal and creating more protected areas, of implementing them correctly, and of being willing to tax themselves to do this. Because it's very easy for anybody to respond that they want to save the world. It's another one to say, are you supportive of this when it's going to cost you more in your day-to-day lives? And the fact is that we do have that in those goals. And so this is why I stress the implementation so much for us that has gone in the actual, you know, embassy and consulate network, that we have continued to do so because, again, we have 20 million citizens, voting folks in the U.S., which is a shift of the country. And I keep highlighting that because even though the US has not been the most ambitious or proactive player here, there are alternative pathways to create that action relative to not just the executive, but other paths. So I would encourage you all to look at that diaspora and the paths of action a little bit more creatively.

I think I would join Julian on many of the points that he made, but in particular how for me the... Please switch the second microphone because it's impossible to... The issue is not necessarily to create new, develop new instrument, create new mechanisms, but build on what we have and ensure that what we have is one effectively implemented and functions as it should. I'll keep being optimistic. I don't think the BBNG agreement will necessarily fix everything, but I think it provides really a tremendous opportunity to look at what we have and build bridges, enhance the cooperation between the existing mechanisms that we already have to address some of the challenges in terms of effectiveness in particular. Thank you.

Hi, my call to action is really simple, although it might be difficult to implement, but that's why we all are in the room to figure it out. The first call to action is treating all ecosystems equally. Yes, mangrove area did increase, but did it increase at the cost of losing tidal marshes and seagrass beds? If yes, then the biodiversity goal we have achieved by increasing mangrove area is incomplete and unsuccessful. The second call to action is treating all communities equally. So if to protect or establish a protected area for mangroves, if we have to kick out the people who actually live in that ecosystem and depend on that ecosystem, then in order to protect this biodiversity, if we are failing the people who depend on it, then that biodiversity goal is also unsuccessful. So treating ecosystems and people equally and respecting their rights of nature and people is also very important. Thank you.

So to close, I think that we can bring together the governance that is now fragmented through synergies, partnerships, quality, but we need quantity as well. Quantity and quality, and how can we get to quality working with the people on the front lines of conservation and the coastal communities, giving them the right equipment, the right finance, And let's be innovative to tackle the challenge that we have ahead. Thank you.

Thank you. We have some lunch outside so that you don't starve. And thank you for coming to this session.

Thank you for having us.

Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming to our session 5, the how do we move from ambitious global target to real world ground level action. This session, we have the four speakers and three panelists. This session was kind of designed as a kind of continuation of the session one in this morning, which covers nexus assessment, how to implement nexus approaches on the ground. And we had already a lot about nexus assessment and also some of the example of the case studies. And this session is further explore the how we can really explore or taking action or to implement, to operationalize nexus assessment. My name is, by the way, my name is Osamu Saito from the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, IGES, and also I'm a visiting professor of the University of Tokyo. I've been working for this science policy forum since Montreal, Calgary, Montreal, the COP15 in Montreal, and this is the third time to coordinate the Science Policy Forum session for me. And I'm very privileged and honored to be the coordinator of this session. Thank you very much. So due to the time constraint, I would like to give more time for all the speakers. But yeah, I just would like to briefly mention about this session. So again, this session is also focusing on how to operationalize nexus assessment output and also the nexus approaches on the ground. And also we also invited some of the speakers from different sectors and also partners from the different sectors to discuss this topic. So key questions We have two key questions. What are the primary institutional barriers? Well, not only the institutional barriers. So we would like to hear what's the body and challenges preventing integration of nexus approaches into the national or local socioeconomic policies. And how can public-private partnership or more extensive partnership effectively scale up nature positive actions? at the ground level? So these are three overarching questions for this particular session. And then I would like to move on to the first presentation by myself. And then we will move to the three presentations afterwards. Need to go back

Okay, so the reason behind I'm also coordinating this session is I was the coordinating lead author of the Nexus assessment. Already this morning, David Obura and also the PAM already explained about the outcome and outputs of Nexus assessment. So I would not repeat the same presentation again, but I'll just briefly kind of summarize what we have done during this Nexus assessment. So Nexus assessment itself focuses on the five Nexus elements, climate change, water, biodiversity, food and health. And these five crises are interlinked, but most of the policies and the response options implemented in silo, in separately. So that's the key challenges. But there are more than 70 response options already available, as David and also Tom already explained, and then emphasizing a role for everyone. And as I think you already saw this slide, so we have this more than 70 response options we can evaluate as a part of the available response options. during this Nexus assessment, including conserve, restore ecosystem, manage ecosystem, consume sustainably, reduce pollution, integrate planning and governance, managing risk, and ensure rights and equity, aligning finances. Finance is also quite important part of this Nexus assessment and others. I'm not going to detail each one, but yep, those who are interested in, please Take a look at the summary for policy maker of the Nexus assessment. Each response options also evaluated how it affect on the five Nexus elements on positive impact or negative impact. And also during this assessment, we also proposing the key components for the Nexus approaches as a Nexus governance. So we reviewed a number of the literatures to identify what is needed to implement or realize nexus governance. And we identified the five key components, integrated holistic framings, inclusive approaches, consideration with equity and accountability, and consideration with also the processes for the collaboration and coordination, and adaptive and reactive and experimental. So these five components can work as kind of the compass to navigate tackling nexus challenges. So these are the one with the new kind of the knowledge generation based on our nexus assessment. But the key challenge is how we can really operationalize these kind of a bit abstract kind of concept, conceptual base, kind of the key components for the Nexus governance. And also that we have been, IPES have been proposing this nature futures framework with three value prioritization for the future scenario making. This nature futures framework is not used only for scenario making, but it can be used for the policy, the reviewing, and also other uses. And then the next speaker, Laura and myself, is a task force member of the scenario and models of the IPBES task force. And we've been also working how to operationalize this nature futures framework to meet the local needs and context. So this is a very simple triangle, the framework, which represent three bodies relating to the, representing the relationship between nature and the people. The nature for nature prioritizes intrinsic values, and nature for culture prioritizes relational values. And lastly, the nature for society prioritizes utilitarian benefits and instrumental values, which the people can gain from the nature. And we've been working, and there's many case studies already implemented. in many parts of the world, including Asia. And then I myself have been leading one with the leading one flagship project in Japan to operationalize this nature futures framework and then also put into collecting nature the scenarios developed by the nature futures framework with quantifying models. at national scale and also local scales. Also taking account indirect drivers and also interaction between value, behavior, and culture and biodiversity. But I'm not going to detail about this project today. I just would like to provide some examples which we apply this Nature Futures framework and also the this the the concept of how also applying the Nexus approaches to this the case study site in Sado Island. Sado Island is one of the biggest island locating into the Japan seaside as you can see in the in the map and it's quite famous for for for the traditional landscape producing rice. As you see, this is a rice terrace, and they're surrounded by the mountains. And also, the settlements are located nearby the paddy field. We call it a traditional cultural landscape, as a satoyama. But this area is also suffering very rapid, drastic population decrease. and aging, and due to population decrease and aging, also that this caused land abandonment, which is forest abandonment, plantation forest abandoned, and also the many farm land, including this kind of beautiful rice terrace is also abandoned. But this, the Sado Island is also famous to kind of revitalizing the community through the kind of nexus kind of approaches. They introduce, as a part of the integrated framework, they introduce a crystal ibis. Crystal ibis is an endangered symbolic bird species of the island. And the farmers introduce new rice producing scheme in harmony with crystal ibis, the habitat. And also, as a part of the inclusive approach, this Sado Island create Saddle Living Labs lab with the local municipality and the local communities to and also they are using nature futures framework to for the scenario development and also that they this living lab is working on some of the experimental actions including the coordinating six more than six projects relating to the biodiversity, water, food, and health. And this is also the, their activities are growing and the change and adapting. So starting with experimental phase and then goes to the stabilization phase and spreading and the system deployment. And now it's a kind of, they are working on the adaptive recalibration. This is a rice certification scheme started by the local agriculture association, the local NGOs, the local farmers come up with the certificate requirement, including reducing 50% of this 50% pesticides and fertilizers. And also that they ask farmer to conduct the biodiversity monitoring survey on their paddy field. And then as a, this is kind of final, a few more slides to finish. So Japan also hosted the second Global Nature Positive Summit this year in July in Kumamoto. And as a part of this, our project, we also organize the session titled at the front of the effort to transition toward nature positive communities, highlighting the Sado Island and also another our case study site, Minami Sanriku. I'm not going to detail, but we and then these are conducted in Japanese. Sorry, maybe it's not coming out. Okay, let's forget about Anyway, so we had a very organized session and actually a few of the participants came to our session to hear how they started their nature positive, the actions on the ground, also the following nature and operationalizing nexus approaches on the ground. Yeah, anyway, so I'm going to finish my presentation by saying that this IPBES Nexus Assessment provides decision makers the best available evidence on the interlinkage of biodiversity, food, water, health, and climate change, and a wide range of response options is already available, and nexus governance approaches is also quite important and we identify five key components of the Nexus governance and nature futures framework is also useful tools and with I also provide some one example from Sado Island so that's all my presentation thank you very much and then those who have questions and comments here we will have enough time for discussion so I would like to invite the next speaker Lola Pereira And then-- Wait a minute.

No problem.

One operation is quite difficult.

Great. So good afternoon, everyone. Wonderful to be here with you all today. And let me just check this does-- ah, amazing. It goes back and forward. So my name is Lara Pereira. As Usama mentioned, I'm a professor at the Global Change Institute at Wits University in South Africa. And I'm going to also build on the Nature Futures Framework. So thank you very much for already presenting that and giving an introduction, Usama. And it's also interesting to sit on the nexus day of the policy, of the Science Policy Forum, because I was actually an author on the Transformative Change Assessment. So I think this just goes to show how interconnected these two assessments are and how they actually need to play together. And I'm gonna start with this broad set of very ambitious targets that we set ourselves around living in harmony with nature by 2050. And I think that we're all very familiar with this term, but I think if we all closed our eyes and tried to imagine what our communities, our countries, our territories would look like if we actually achieved this target, it may not be as easy for us to actually vision, right? We can sort of So what does it actually look like to live in harmony with nature is a question that we've been grappling with within the science for a couple of years now. It led to the development of the Nature Futures Framework, which was focused on these diverse values for nature that Usama presented, not just on the potential dystopian or problematic explorative futures that tend to come up when we think about scenarios within the climate space. It's really easy to fall into a trap of how bad things can get because they are bad around us. Fires, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, sort of this constant sort of bad news, whether it's around increasing conflict or inequality or just. these bad stories that are around us, it can be even harder for us to imagine what it actually looks like to get things right, what it looks like to achieve the Paris Agreement, what it looks like to achieve the Kunming Global Biodiversity Framework. And so we need new techniques, we need new ways to actually start to bring what we call this imaginative capacity to bear and to use those sort of narratives and stories of what these preferable futures could look like to actually sort of ground them in our local And so come back to this quote, which is attributed to Lao Tzu, but probably wasn't actually him. And this comes to this idea of transformative change, right? If you don't change direction, you may end up where you are heading, right? And I think that's the story of a lot of our intergovernmental discussions, is that we keep on heading in the same direction, even though we know we need to change. And it also emphasizes that any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous, right? So when we're thinking about transformative futures, we really need to get out of our business as usual way of thinking about things. We need to think about radical reconfigurations, go back to historical understandings of what these diverse connections to nature were and what those could look like in the future. So I'm going to do a little bit of a whirlwind tour of some of the work that we've been doing in this space, really around creating imaginative, creative, inclusive processes with diverse stakeholders around the world to vision preferable futures. And so here are some examples from across the African continent where I come from. We've got Rwanda in the left, Namibia in the bottom left, Zambia around the clear floodplain and around Victoria Falls. we've also got Benin and then in Cape Town in the bottom right so these are just some of examples of the workshops that we've run with um some local stakeholders I won't go into all of them I'm going to go into two but again as Osama mentioned um the underlying rationale of framework that we used was the nature Futures framework which um was sort of welcomed in decision ipip 91 which is really about understanding that there are diverse uh values that we have for nature that all of these are preferable are sometimes trade-offs across emphasizing some over the others and because the metrics that we have largely in our models to quantify some of these values tend to sit in the instrumental side and so we tend to lose some of these really important relational or cultural or even intrinsic values for nature because we can measure agricultural production a lot more easily than we can around identity tied to being a fisher in a particular area and that again that these are all multiple they're all embedded in multiple different ways and diverse perspectives of life. So this is just a way of being able to really bring them, making them visible, bring these to the fore. So that's what we're going to emphasize here. So I actually wanted to start it off, and noting that we have amazing simultaneous translation, that sometimes we don't need to communicate in words, or particularly in English, which tends to be the default language that we have these conversations in. that words can also tell multiple pictures. And so we actually got artists to walk on the journey with us during these discussions. And you can see some of the images of these preferable futures that they started to unpack. So I just wanted to showcase and to acknowledge also the artists themselves that this is another way that we can start to actually imagine the types of futures that we want to be living in. So, was I? Yeah, okay. So coming off the back of this, you can see that the center picture was actually based on a visioning workshop that we had in the Beroce cultural landscape, which is in a part of a sort of western Zambia bordering onto Angola. And we got a group of people together for three days to discuss sort of the nature futures that they wanted to see. And they had variety of different groups that formed up. But the interesting thing, and it comes back to the response options that Osama was mentioning, is that each of these futures that they were able to imagine and they acted out actually had a variety of different actions underlying them. Oh, this is the old presentation. It's okay. I will make things up as I go along. Yeah, this is going to change my things like this. It's okay. So I'm going to jump into this slide and you guys won't see some of the pretty pictures that I put into the other presentation, but you can always ask me and there was some QR codes that I wanted to add into on some ongoing work that we have. But anyhow, so there were these three visions that we put into. that process. And you can see we actually map them to the different targets of the biodiversity framework. And you can actually see how these local actions that were inspired by people, there were 20 of us sort of sitting in a room thinking through ambitious sort of futures for this region, how they actually can start to help us to achieve a lot of the framework targets for the GBF. Interestingly, gender didn't come up as a particular issue, so that's why that's But obviously, a different group of people would be focusing on different emphasis in terms of the types of futures that they were thinking through. So this is an example you can read further in this paper by my PhD student, who's from the region and who's actually back in Zambia doing a postdoc now. Um, and these were also mapped to the Paris Agreement. So again, you can see that sort of some of these actions really happening at the local level, um, can be, be meeting both our biodiversity and our climate targets, which is something really important to emphasize, that when it actually comes to being on the ground, that these things really do work across the, these different nexus elements. It will be a surprise to me to see what comes up next in this. We also discussed different kinds of indicators, particularly around indigenous people and local communities that could help us again move away from just these sort of very instrumentalized ways of sort of seeing the future. into taking into account, for example, human animal communication was a really strong part of one of the futures, indigenous astronomy techniques for sort of communicating climate information, the use of natural materials in the built environment that isn't sort of re-embedding this notion of like concrete and sort of non-permeable substances. So these are all sort of really, really important discussions that happened. Also across the water food health nexus around sustainable harvesting, you can see they're actually part of the So the actually floods every year, and there's a whole ceremony of moving through and changing positions that the royal household goes through. Local and indigenous genetic seed banks, I think that's come up quite often within a lot of the discussions we've been having around here. Traditional medicine incorporated within the medical system. So again, a lot of rich, rich, really locally grounded ideas that emerged from this. The other presentation that I wanted to just briefly touch on, and I won't go into the second slide because it's a little bit confusing, but we did a similar process in the Monotrans Boundary Biosphere Reserve across the Benin Republic and Togo. There were three different scenarios that emerged from that discussion, and again, you can read the paper by my PhD student, who's also from the region, but a real emphasis here, you've got an image of the Zangbeton, sort of mangrove of indigenous practice that is really about sort of restoring and conserving the mangrove forest in that particular region. There was a really strong sort of emphasis on how we need to reinstate, revive indigenous principles and practices, on the role of public participation decision making, about the need for actually thinking through what types of alternative livelihoods are around, and this question of restoration. And I think in the ocean panel that we had prior to lunch, there was a really important emphasis around of restoration of one system, for example, mangroves, should not be at the expense of others, for example, sort of tidal marshes or seagrasses. So really trying to capture this more diverse understanding. Yeah, so this is just another image, but that's basically repeating it. I changed that. So the most exciting part, I think, of this entire process is that we also had some speculative fiction writers along the journey with us. And we have just published, it's open access, you can download it from our Future Ecosystems for Africa website, this narrative called Africa Pambili. We have writers from Senegal, from Malawi, from South Africa, and from Nigeria, and from Zambia. sort of we've all written these speculative fiction stories about sort of the journey towards what it would actually take to achieve some of these some of these more desirable features so I encourage you to go and take take a look at that and again our future ecosystems for Africa website that you'll find here also has some evidence from the six principles for getting climate Solutions right in Africa which was a QR code that I did have and our blue blue Africa process which is again taking some of these qualitative discussions and trying to quantify them for improved decision making. So this is really quickly the Africa Data Drive is the quantification of this, sort of taking these three different indices, total species richness, biodiversity intactness, and sort of the conversion index. You can sort of zoom in into particular countries. Here you've got Ethiopia, and you can actually at the very sort of high level play around with sort of some of the different layers of what you want to be emphasizing, sort of whether it's increase in agricultural productive land or increase in protected area land. Again, trying to take some of these some of these more qualitative indicators into account in these data layers. So it's an ongoing work in process. As I said, that Future Ecosystems for Africa website will have all of this information available. And I wanted to just end with this quote from The Economist that in 2011 was already telling us that humans have changed the way that the world works, and now we have to change the way that we think about it, too. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Laura. Yeah, I'm quite interested in your anthology of the African futures. I would like to look at more detail. Thank you very much. And also the visual works and future imagining, transformative future majorities. Thank you very much. I think you want to hear more, but yeah, let's move on to the third speaker, Jamel. So, yeah, I... Okay, sorry. Okay.

Multitasking.

Yeah, multitasking.

From University of Sherbrooke, from Canada. I'm also Deputy General Manager of Productique Quebec and CED Director for Africa and Middle East. Today, I will share a research-based approach to a simple but important question. How can we turn biodiversity ambitions into concrete actions? The solution will use the concept of dynamic capabilities with a new definition, which I will propose. And the main idea behind it is very simple. We need to connect people, knowledge, and resources to make collective action possible. You know, now that we are living in an age of disruption, multiple interconnected shocks are reshaping our world. Climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, pandemic, et cetera. So disruption is no longer an exception for our life. So it's a common phenomena which we cope with it. But how can we prepare for an uncertain future? If you ask this question to researchers, they'll tell you dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities is the concept that expresses the organization's ability to sense, seize, and reconfigure internal and external resources to respond to rapidly changing environments. This is the definition of Professor Tis. He pronounced it 30 years ago. And this concept is based on three pillars. First, the sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. But in our day's life, can we do all these things alone, this is the big question. But when we refer to biodiversity and to our way of life today, the answer will be certainly no. We need openness and we need more collaboration. Because as you know, biodiversity, territorial questions involves many parties. They involve researchers, They involve governments, businesses, communities, farmers, civil society, et cetera. So my doctoral research, which I have done these last years, focused on this topic. And after a reflection, I proposed a fourth pillar for the definition of dynamic capabilities, which looks to this aspect, which is openness mainly openness strategy or strategy of openness. So this used to be the last definition. This is the new definition, which in which I have added this fourth pillar, openness strategy. And I'm not talking about openness. It's openness strategy. So you need, I'm not asking to take off borders with partners. No, you have to define how wide will be the border with your neighbors and with your partners. So you have to develop a specific strategy in this relationship. So my research, I had to prove that this new definition is more efficient than the previous one. And this was my main research question. The results, I have tested the model on more than 130 Canadian company, mainly operating in manufacturing sector. And I measured the impact of the four dimensions dynamic capability on the sustainable performance I done the same thing with the dynamic capabilities. with three dimensions. The results are very evident. So we realized that more than 61.6% of the sustainable performance variance is influenced by the new definition. And you can see that the openness is the most influent capability on the sustainable performance. Those who would like to know more about the results, this, well, the results and figures, I can provide you this later. This was proved in the manufacturing sector. My question now, can we extend it to territories? We have applied this model in special companies, in company, but can I, can we move it to a territory. That means many parties, not only one company, many companies, involving also researchers, again, civil society, governments, businesses, et cetera. The research proved empirically the evidence of the efficiency of the new definition. But actually, we are exploring or testing this the new definition in territories and in ecosystems. So when we talk about biodiversity, particularly, you know that in biodiversity you have a lot of knowledge. Scientists have worked a lot to bring us a lot of knowledge, but how to translate that in actions, that's the big questions and that is the challenge. So how will we be bridging this gap and turning biodiversity knowledge into territories' actions? The solution we are testing is to apply to develop dynamic capabilities in those territories with the four dimensions. And we are trying in our exercises now to demonstrate that in real life. The first example we applied was in the region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue in Canada, which is a resource region. And it had a major challenge after the COVID crisis, which is attractiveness, the region. is a bit far from Montreal, so it needs a special attractiveness. So we collected all interested parties and concerned people around organizations around this topic and to bring them together in very special way of work using co-development technique, which is particularly the mastermind technique, which we could customize to the region. And we involved 25 leaders, 25 leaders from the region, bring them together in mastermind sessions and work how to bridge the gap of attractiveness of that region. I am so happy to see that some of these leaders are present with us today. So the result of these sessions, mastermind sessions, was, well, some projects to realize and to improve the attractiveness of the region. These are the 25 leaders, very important persons in those regions, and formidable people, very engaged in the project. And they've come-- well, there are five leaders from the five regions, because the region is composed by five MRC. So we mixed all of them together and to look after this challenge. So after having done this work, the co-development work which lasts many months, we could arrive to identify 25 projects, 30. percent of them are in the social sector, 24, 24, in the strategic sector, 20, in economic sector, 16, in marketing sector, and eight in innovation, but the most important thing, that while we have been progressing in the, in the co-development sessions, so the mastermind, the four dimensions of open strategy, sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring have been progressing from one session to another. This means that the dynamic capability is progressing by the time. And this was the main objective of the project. The same problematic is present in in another region in Tunisia. It's completely different country, but the same needs. We have communities, many communities involved. So in Tunisia, the region of Douga is very touristic region where cultural heritage is involved, where agriculture and tourism is involved, local communities, universities, and researchers. As in, like in, in, in many parties have been involved. So different territories, but the same needs are expressed and you have been using the same procedure. That means co-development by mastermind and building up the four dimensions of the dynamic capability. well, is a well-known, well, it's a resource-based region also, but it is, historically, it was the main water source of water in that region. And now it has a shortage, a dramatic shortage of water. So all the population have been, came together, all these pastors came together to face this new challenge. And the solution was building this new dynamic capability. A lot of work is being done now in that region with the masterminds, all kinds of organizations are involved and a lot of work is on the ground for the moment. So how do all these elements come together to drive biodiversity actions? So, in other words, let's connect all these dots. We have been talking about global crisis, biodiversity changes, nexus, a lot of exchange these days about the concept, but at the same time, we are proposing the dynamic capabilities with the four-dimension definition, territory, collaborative actions, and biodiversity framework. Well, if we connect all these together, we will see that the territorial nexus reveals the interdependencies between all these parties. The dynamic capability turn knowledge into collective actions with the mastermind techniques and building these four dimensions for the dynamic capability. And the GPF provides the global direction. Together, they enable concrete action for biodiversity. So, in my conclusion, I would say that the future of biodiversity depends not only on what we know, but on what we are collectively capable of doing. And the solution would be in a territorial for the dynamic capability. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Jamel. Yeah, I really like the page 16 slide, which, you know, putting all together and how dynamic capabilities can connect dots and also including the GBF targets. So I really like that concept. Thank you very much. So now I would like to invite Ayaka Nomura from the 7i Holding. So floor is yours. Hold a second, I'm going to change to the slideshow from the beginning. Okay. I think it.

Oh, okay. Well, thank you very much. And it's actually nice to hear the company which is sustainable is more open. So now I can be very open to in the stage. Okay. Well, my name is Ayaka Nomura. It is honor to be here and I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this opportunity to speak and to share our initiatives. So first, I'd like to start with our key message. We engage with communities and customers every day through our stores and the products and services we provide. That is why, together with a wide range of stakeholders, we are committed to create positive impact on both nature and society through everyday shopping. So I sincerely hope that we can move forward together by having dialogue like this and today and future collaboration. Now let me introduce my company. 7&I Holdings is a global retail group connected, centered on its convenience store business, 7-Eleven. It operates approximately 22,000 stores in Japan and 86,000 stores worldwide. Every day, our stores serve around 20 million customers in Japan and 62.4 million customers globally. Our corporate creed was established in 1972, and its fundamental principle remain unchanged to this day. At the heart of what we value most are trust and integrity. Our business today exists because of the cooperation and trust we have built with our customers, business partners, and local communities. So our stakeholders include our customers, franchise owners, employees, business partners, local communities, government, investors, and future generations of the whom we have yet to see. To be truly sustainable business, good products and convenience alone are not enough. We must take nature and biodiversity take into account and take action together with various stakeholders and partners. That is why our business growth strategy is closely linked to our sustainability strategy. Today, I'd like to focus in particular on our efforts to achieve nature positive future. So in 2019, we announced our environmental declaration, Green Challenge 2050. It is built around three major pillars. decarbonization, a circular economy, and a society in harmony with nature. Under these pillars, we have established four targets: reducing CO2 emissions, addressing plastic issues, reducing food loss and waste, and of course, promoting food recycling. And last but not least, pursuing sustainable sourcing. However, going forward, we realized that we must do more than simply just reduce negative impact. We must ask ourselves and how our business can contribute to society and how we can create a positive impact on nature and communities. We believe that it is essential to move into this next phase. To this end, we established our nature policy. This policy focuses on avoiding and reducing negative impact while creating positive impact through regeneration and restoration of nature. We believe that a sustainable planet is essential for both to a sustainable society and to our own long-term growth. This is not something that any one company or organization can achieve alone. So we'd like to take an action together with all the like-minded people and organization here today and fully is committed to advancing nature positive. So as I mentioned earlier, to measure both positive and negative impacts, we must first understand where we stand today. For this reason, we have conducted analysis based on the recommendation of TCFD and TNFD, and of course, referred to the IPBES Nexus report. One of the key nature-related risks that we identified for our business is coffee sourcing. Togo coffee is one of our signature products enjoyed by customers in 7-Eleven stores around the world. So if we take no action, yields and quality may decline while sourcing costs soar. So this could place pressure on our business itself. So to address these risks, on ground level, 7-Eleven Japan is supporting coffee producers. For example, in Brazil, we are supporting regenerative agriculture, including the use of cover crop. The cover crops absorb CO2 while their root help retain water and prevent the loss of nutrients from the soil. So they can also enhance biodiversity in the field and increase the population of beneficial insects that help control pests. In addition to generating a range of positive impacts for nature, research indicates that cover crop can generally increase yields by around 15%. So another initiative that I'd like to focus on today is 7-Eleven Japan is also engaged in the development of local sourced products. Today, our local sourcing and food education initiative are being implemented across Japan. I would now like to introduce one example from Kumamoto. What matters to us is that our objective is not simply to create products using local specialities. We seek to understand the challenges facing each community and identify solutions through product development. This is the approach we take. So in Kumamoto, the local community brought several issues to 7-Eleven, such as, oh, some children were unfamiliar with the local specialities. or some children or school children skipping the breakfast. Also in the agricultural industry side, there was a population decline in agriculture industry, as well as the Kumamoto people wanted to increase the demand for local milk. So what we did is the in this project, members of the 7-Eleven Japan team delivered a food education outreach program at elementary school in Kumamoto City. And together with the children, our business partners and members of the local government, they developed a breakfast products using local ingredients. So this is the product they actually created that children love. So by developing a product based on local ingredients that the children learned about in their food education classes and actually children actually love. So we can return economic values to the region's agricultural industries and moreover, producers are able to sustain If the, when producers are able to sustain their business locally, then they also help protect the surrounding natural environment and ecosystem. So for us, this approach creates face-to-face relations with producers and enable us to source fresh ingredients from areas near our stores. So on connection with local communities extends beyond our products and stores. So establishing in 1993, 7-Eleven Foundation has worked for 33 years with franchise owners, employees, and local communities to conserve nature in the regions across Japan in activities, including providing grants to NGOs and NPOs, But the foundation itself actually also engaged in environmental initiatives, maintaining forest and planting new trees through seven forest program and planting eelgrass in coastal waters to create nurseries for marine life through the seven sea forest program. The foundation also registers to OECM sites, Takao and Nature School in Tokyo, and Hannan Sea Forest, which contribute to 30 by 30 targets. So equally important, the work of communication, the value of nature. We have established nature, nature school in Takao, Tokyo, and Kuzhu Nature School, Oita, in Kyushu, providing opportunities to learn local ecosystem as well as spaces for recreation. So across our vast value chain, we work with business partners and other stakeholders that are actively advancing nature positive. So by engaging in dialogue like this and expanding these collaborations, we can accelerate progress. At the same time, our greatest strength is our connection with customers through more than 86,000 stores worldwide. Our stores, products, and services connect us with millions of customers and communities every day. So although we still in the middle of long journey, we strive to create positive impacts and value in each product, stores and services. In this end, our customers can participate in advancing nature positive through their everyday shopping. When these changes come together, we can drive broader societal transformation. And we believe that ultimately we can help build a more sustainable nature positive society. So thank you so much for your kind attention.

Thank you, Ayako, for the very interesting inspiring presentation by the private company and in collaboration with different stakeholders. So this is a very good example of the multi-stakeholder kind of solution for operationalized Nexus approaches. Thank you very much. Now let me share. Yeah, thank you very much. So we have three, the panelists. So, but we haven't decided the order. So, but those who are, you know, comfortable to starting, who are the, would like to start? Anna? So, Anna is the senior researcher at the Institute of Botany, National Academy of Science, Armenia. She's also the member of the IPES.

Thank you. As a host country representative, I will start. First of all, welcome to Armenia and thank you for the invitation to speak in this panel. So what I wanted to say that it was very inspiring, very interesting presentations, very diverse. But I want to speak about the mainstreaming of the nexus concept, nexus approach in the national level. So there is a paradox because in the global level we all agreed that these elements are interlinked to each other. We even have this best assessment. We brought all the governments, all the parties together and they approved, they agreed that this is like that and they are going to use in the national level, but apparently in the national level, everything is fragmented. Policy making is fragmented, budgets, priorities, everything is fragmented and there is no like a single solution, how to bring all together and have like a joint platform, how these priorities related to the different elements can work with each other. But at the local level, again, we cannot separate these elements because at the local level, local communities, local people dealing with these elements jointly. So we need to find a way to mainstream this nexus approach in the government, in the decision-making level, to make sure that we are not wasting the budget, the resources, the human resources. which can be very important for the moving forward, the next assessment, and which is a key also for the implementation of the KMGBF. The other thing, which is like in the concept of this discussion, It's a public-private partnership, and we heard very good examples of how it can be a win-win situation. But also we need to mention that if the public sector will lose it, it will be lost also for the businesses, for the private sector. The other thing is funding. If public funding is not flexible, so it has its own items, under which you can play. Private sector can be very, very flexible and can have an initiative which really can help to move forward this nexus assessment, nexus approach in the national and also in the local level. Because I think the first where we need to start and where we need to invest is a local level, because they are the main level where we are dealing with all the elements at the same time and it is very important to have this Nexus approach thank you.

Thank you very much Al very yeah all points are quite relevant and yeah very useful and then for future Nexus approach uh localization and operationalization thank you very much um so can I invite Kendall?

Yes.

Yeah, from United States. So she is the Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer, City of Los Angeles. So for you, it's about three minutes or something. Yeah.

Sure. I'll keep an eye out. But thank you, everybody, for having us. I'm pleased to be here. And I want to reiterate some of the points that the panel made. I think particularly, how do we bring this integration of values and information down to ground level action? So as mentioned, I'm with the City of Los Angeles. and I'm with their Department of Water and Power. And one of the things that I think is really important around ground level action and integration of nature values and the different types of values that we have in the Nature Futures work, as well as integration of different resources, I think perhaps the most important might be our imaginations. I loved that comment earlier, is the ability to move beyond collaboration toward partnerships. At the Department of Water and Power, we are a municipal utility, so we quite easily collaborate with other departments in the city of Los Angeles, where we can share information and support each other. But partnerships are where you're able to integrate really the different objectives that the partners bring to the table, the different resources, and unify them into a single approach or set of actions. And one of the things I would offer as an idea is how often are you partnering with your utilities? I think utilities have different models across the world, whether they're public or private and the funding streams, but all utilities seek to invest in activities that help them deliver the essential services of power and water to their customers. I would also say that probably all utilities around the world are highly dependent on nature and climate. And so justifying those investments is not that big of a stretch. However, being able to bring all the capacity to the table is very difficult, and that's where we really do need to be able to partner with other organizations, public or private, to get a project off the ground. I would just highlight one very simple project quickly, is we have a great project. It's our Eastern Sierra Forest Health Project, where we are partnering the Department of Water and Power with our National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, our U.S. Forest

Service, our California Fire Department, as well as NGOs to invest. We're investing about $25 million from the Department of Water and Power. And with that seed money, our partners were able to also raise an additional $17 million. So we've been able to bring some funding to the table through that partnership. We are investing in forest and watershed management for both wildfire and drought related issues. So we're integrating both climate and nature there. over 85 square miles of a region that's not actually even in our territory, but it surrounds our territory and surrounds assets, both power and water assets that are highly dependent and highly susceptible to wildfire and drought and flooding issues. So this is a great partnership for us. It's going to bring us data on how the nature-based investments improve our project economics. I know that's only one aspect of value that nature brings, but that's an aspect that's really important to us and one that's difficult for us to measure on our own. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comments. Yeah, why the fire is quite important issues. And then, yeah, actually, before Armenia, I was in Tasmania and Australia, they are also suffering the dry and the wildfires. So I heard a lot about those, how the local government is really struggling to control the wildfires. So thank you very much. So let me invite Noor as a last commentator. He is a senior program officer of the UNEP WCMC. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to share some perspectives. Briefly reflecting on some key words from our previous panelists, Dr. Ala mentioned fragmentation, and Kendall mentioned the importance of bringing people to the table. And so I think it may be helpful for us to briefly reflect on fragmentation and difficulties in bringing people to the table. We have fragmentation in governance and decision making. We have fragmentation in the uptake of knowledge. And we have fragmentation in knowledge systems and values, as well as fragmentation in our ability to imagine different futures. drawing on Laura's presentation from earlier. On fragmentation in governance and decision making, we know that biodiversity, food, climate, water, and health usually sit in different institutions and run through separate processes, such as the NBSAPs and the NDCs. As we know, the nexus approach asks us to treat these as interconnected But unfortunately, our institutions are rarely set up that way, making it difficult to bring people to the table. On the fragmentation of how we engage with knowledge, we know that this challenge, it's not only about fragmented governance, but often when we find different assessments, whether from IPBES or IPCC, those findings are usually taken up separately. Evidence can be made available, but it still needs to be understood, contextualized and applied in each national setting as well as across different sectors. Finally, fragmented knowledge systems and values as well as in our fragmented imagination. We know that not everyone's knowledge counts, not all values are reflected. So what's the way forward? There's a tremendous plethora of methodologies and approaches of bringing different people to the table, and it brings me great pleasure to reflect on one such methodology, the trial of methodology. At the moment, this is it feels like a monologue where I am speaking alone. Maybe it'll turn into a dialogue where two of us are speaking together. However, trialogue refers to bringing together decision makers from policy alongside practitioners, knowledge holders, and different stakeholders to the table in such a way where they can engage in meaningful discussions, working across sectors, stakeholders, rights holders, as well as knowledge systems. These are dialogues or structured spaces. where policy, science, and practice can interpret evidence together related to national realities and co-create pathways for action. I am approaching three and a half minutes, and so I'll give a few brief examples. So this trilogue methodology was developed through the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Network, also known as BESNET, which in and of itself is a is a successful example of how three different UN agencies, which include the Environment Program through UNEP, WCMC, alongside the UNDP and UNESCO, to work and support and strengthen that science policy interface, supporting nine regional trialogues that were held between 2017 and 2026. engaging stakeholders and knowledge holders from 46 different countries, 500 policymakers, scientists, practitioners. The numbers go on and the impacts are clear with clear case studies on how we can engage with different assessments, with different types of knowledge in different contexts, bringing together these different knowledge holders, different decision makers from different sectors to try and make sense, to try and contextualize this rich evidence and to develop clear action plans that can be taken up not just on a national level, but on subnational and local levels. I will stop it there and hand back to the Chair. I am happy to discuss in more detail later. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Noah. You have beautifully summarised all the presentations and provided very constructive comments. Thank you very much. And now before open the floor for the question, I'd like to go around one kind of quick round discussion about what are the major barriers or obstacles and what are the enablers to operationalize nexus approaches. So using your case studies, examples, the And maybe you touch upon a little bit about during your presentation. But yeah, if you can kind of highlight what are the key barriers or obstacles and what are the enablers to overcome some of those barriers or obstacles. So can we, who can start? Yeah, okay.

Thanks, Osamu, for putting us on the spot. So I think one of the biggest barriers that we encounter is vested power interests, right? Vested interests, power dynamics that operate both at the global level, but can go all the way down into the community level, largely vested within some sectors with the national government in particular. So you see how treasury tends to have much more influence and power than most of our environmental ministries a lot of the time, how certain business interests tend to trump sort of local sort of, uh, local communities and sort of local interests. And I think that until we sort of recognize that and actually learn how to work or transform current systems, um, to, to disrupt the, those power dynamics, I think, um, we're not going to get there. we won't be seeing some of the changes that we need. That being said, looking at some of the presentations from my panelists, 7-Eleven, one of the biggest corporations around the world, actually trying to join with us in this transformative journey towards improving things for people and nature. So those are the opportunities, I think, right, is where you actually see power starting to come into the side of local communities, of nature, of marginalized, vulnerable sort of communities and voices. I think that's where you'll start to see some of the action that we need to see happen. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Yeah, Jamel, you want to say?

Yeah. The complexity of the situation comes from the diversity of the stakeholders. We, in such project, questions related to biodiversity in general, many stakeholders are involved with different levels, and communication can't work properly in this context. And the solution for me would be openness and the strategy of openness, how can, how can we put all those stakeholders together and right the, the right way to develop that communication between them. And this is, uh, this is not, uh, breaking the borders, but building a strategic way to find the best way to establish in communication between all these stakeholders. So I come back to the fourth pillar of the dynamic capability, which is openness strategy and how when we develop a plan for BI diversity, so we have to develop a strategy to open the communication between all those stakeholders.

Thank you very much. So, Ayaka, do you want to?

Yes. For example, in our case with the food education and local sourcing initiative, they were, first of all, it was very difficult for them to get the necessary stakeholders get together on the same board. And sometimes they needed to speak with different, almost different language and the terminologies to for example, talking to the municipalities or talking to the farmers and producers, they need, in order to communicate and then ask them to get on board, we have to think about what is the right term or right context to talk to those people and then how they get to what is their benefits or what is their interest. So in order to know those, we need to have a lot of dialogues even before to invite them to this project. So even if that local small project, it took them for around one year. So I think the barrier is the this biodiversity metrics and expertise, which is great, but we actually need more easy, everyday language that everyone understand. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Yeah, I think that one of the kind of catalysts of those, you know, nexus approaches, yeah, food is very, yeah, key to connecting climate and water, health, biodiversity. So yeah, I think that the food is one of the kind of people that are low to realizing, operationalizing nexus approaches. And then I think that your example is really great examples. And the communication is such a difficult and time consuming with the local stakeholders. Yeah, so thank you very much. do you want other commentators do you want to say something about barriers and enablers if you want to to?

Yeah I mean um just just a short reflection on that uh that It's very complex, it's very complicated because you have a diversity of the elements and at the same time you are dealing with the diversity of the stakeholders. And here there is a huge need of the capacity building and knowledge generation. This is essential and in this regard I think many of the countries should use the global practices and international best practices to make sure with that with the less resources with the limited resources even it's possible to make change and to have an implementation on this.

Thank you, yeah right, it yeah we need to really kind of manage limited resources to operationalize next approaches, yeah that's true, thank you.

I would just make one comment about diversity and how it can be a benefit. I often look to nature in order to learn lessons about how we can operate as in our solutions and certainly between different ecosystems, you have the ecotone area where you often see greater diversity than you do in the individual ecosystems. And the ecotone are where two different ecosystems merge. And nature has said that's the merging of these two different systems is where you actually need the most diversity in order to be able to connect and to be able to come together and find the ways that you can link these two ecosystems. So I would just go back to the comment I made earlier about the role of partnerships. I think partnerships are what enable us to be able to take advantage of that diversity. But I don't know that trying to unify everything is necessarily going to be the solution either.

Thank you very much. So partnership is also another can play the catalyzing function. So Noah, do you want?

There are no barriers. So perhaps me saying that may have woken a few people up in the room, and perhaps this is an invitation to actually discuss barriers a bit more meaningfully. We've been discussing barriers for decades. We've been addressing many of those barriers for decades, and Naturally, as our world evolves, so do those barriers. And as soon as we start overcoming some of those barriers, the challenges in and of themselves evolve. And so it is tricky. I started off by saying that we do not have any barriers. That in and of itself is an example of denial. Denial is truly one of the key barriers, denial around urgency, the urgency for action. In light of a planetary crisis around biodiversity, climate, it's easy to get lost in terminology. We heard about language and even the term biodiversity in and of itself is a barrier. In terms of building partnerships, going forward, we have to think about how we appropriately balance urgency to overcome denial, but also have some empathy for where this denial is coming from. Much of what we are discussing is not comfortable, is not easy, takes a lot of time, is quite expensive. All of us are humans. Many of us are tired. Many of us in this room right now are tired. We've had a long week and somehow we need to survive another week. And so Perhaps one of the main ways to approach these barriers is through empathy, having empathy for ourselves, having empathy for others, and in light of that, being able to talk about and flag this urgency whilst finding ways to hold people accountable. This is a personal reflection, but I hope many of us find it relevant. Thank you.

Thank you very much, bringing empathy. So now I would like to open the floor. So is there any question and comments? This is-- yep.

Thank you very much for the very interesting discussion. And I particularly was amazed to hear the corporate stories of how corporations are beginning to engage in the implementation of the ambitions. And with Seven and I, how did the corporation decide to go in that direction? What was the top level decision and why did you do it?

Thank you for your question. For us, the actually, Our main business is, of course, convenience store business. So in order to be sustainable as a convenience store business, then we have to make the community sustainable too. So we are happy to talk with people in the community, and also the franchise owners are also a citizen in inside the community. So what we believe it is a core value for convenience store business person to make treat community as a whole and then make them sustainable for both of us. So that's actually good for our business too, but also the well-being for the community is good for us.

Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. So you find that the consumer sentiments in Memphis, Tennessee, and in Japan, Tokyo, let's say, 7-Eleven has operations everywhere, right? They're the same? Or you're targeting different markets in different ways in approaching this?

There are several layers that For example, in Green Challenge 2050 targets, this is unanimous targets for all the 7-Eleven companies. But below that, of course, we are dealing with the local communities. So each community have different challenges and issues. So as a holding company, we are not controlling everything, every bit of unanimity of the whole global, but Some, of course, most of them are very local oriented projects and targets too. Is it okay?

I saw some hand over there. Can you come to there, the microphone, and then you can talk?

Yes, good afternoon. I was listening to the very interesting comments of Nor In particular regard to fragmentation, I found it quite interesting to hear that what I regard as the most important fragmentation, which is the fragmentation of ecologies, wasn't mentioned in the list of important things that are being fragmented. And I wondered why that exclusion was there and to get your comments on that particular one.

Thank you very much. Could you elaborate on what you mean by fragmentation of ecologies?

Fragmentation of ecologies is basically occurring due to expansion of human communities and effectively larger areas that have been set aside for nature are being slowly carved away into smaller parcels. And that's the process of fragmentation. And basically, it's a fundamentally important driver of loss. I just was wondering about whether you'd like to make a comment on whether you think that the social fragmentations you were referring to, as opposed to ecological fragmentations, about the balance of those different things?

Thank you very much. I believe that the main context of today's discussion around nexus approaches, how do we come together to address all of those interconnected issues and some of the impacts of those issues. And so what we found is fragmentation in some of those social aspects, whether pertaining to governance systems, fragmentation in the uptake of knowledge, fragmentation in values and knowledge systems, has had tremendous consequences on human and non-human nature, including fragmenting ecologies. So the initial typology was Perhaps just through the lens of how we as humans engage or don't engage and the subsequent impacts on people and nature. Perhaps maybe going forward. It may be helpful for me to consider including fragmentation of ecologies, but perhaps one thing to consider when we talk about. strengthening the inclusion of diverse knowledge systems of indigenous and local knowledge systems, their perspectives and experiences of fragmented ecologies or fragmented biocultural ecologies can be reflected in these discussions.

If I may just comment on that, that because of that, because of the question which you are asking, in the heart of today's discussion is a nexus assessment. where IBBEST tried to have a different group of researchers. They are not only ecologists. We have a diverse group of researchers and practitioners helping in this regard. There are many people from the local communities and indigenous people. There are people who are from social science, from finance and other fields of science and research. So this is just to address what you are asking to not have a fragmentation and to not concentrate all the knowledge only from the one field. I think this is fully reflecting what you are asking for.

Thank you very much. Due to the time constraint, I'd like to close this session. So first of all, thank you very much for all the speakers and the commentators for very valuable, inspiring presentation and the comments. And then also I highly appreciate all the audience participants who joined this session. We will summarize our discussions. I think that we got many good inputs for implementing or operationalizing the Nexus approach on the ground level. And then also we will continue in this fall, we're gonna continue another session, but at the same time, we're gonna start also session eight from contact group five, which I'm also coordinating. So I have to run to another session right after. But thank you very much for this participation. And yeah, so let's wrap. So thank you very much. So that's the end of this session. Thank you.

Hello.

But I have How are you? How are you doing? I'm good. Yes. I'm a bit tired. When did you arrive? Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, too. I just wanted to confirm. Yes. I'm not good at improvising. No, no, no, no worries. Which question? If you will have.

The first one.

Only the first one.

Okay, perfect. Yeah, no, it will be just the first one. No, no, no. No, we had that. No, no, no, don't worry. Okay, perfect. Hello everyone, good afternoon. We're starting in five minutes in case you want to go get some refreshments, coffee or whatever. The whole week. Good afternoon. We just have some refreshment that just arrived, so if you want to grab it quickly, because we're starting in two minutes.

Play all songs of the Kapil Sharma Show.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your participation in this session. So we're going to continue with the agenda of the Seventh Science Policy Forum for Biodiversity. And today we're going to talk about a very key aspect of the interlinkage with other thematic conventions, and it's the One Health. As you may be aware, in the COP16, the CBD adopted the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health, with the main purpose of mainstreaming this approach in the monitoring, but specifically in the implementation of actions that contribute to the accomplishment of the CBD. So today we're going to have four panelists, a fabulous group of women. that with a lot of experience in the science policy interface and that are contributing to the implementation of this Global Action Plan. We, I just have to say that one of the speakers, Charly, was not able to come because she is sick, but I'm sure we have enough information and aspects to consider with the other panelists. So with that said, I think that we can start. So our first panelist, we're gonna have four presentations from each one of our panelists, and then we are gonna have a set of questions from me and other four from you, so we can have some time to hear all the experience from the people in the audience and conclusion to this key conversation. So we're gonna start with Alice Huge, who is a professor of the University of Melbourne. Thank you, Alice, and welcome.

So thank you for staying with us today and forgoing your weekend. It's great to be in a room full of--.

We need the other microphone to be turned off, otherwise we cannot hear. Can we ask the moderator to turn off the microphone? We cannot translate. Please ask the speaker to turn off the microphone, otherwise we cannot interpret.

But firstly, why should we care about One Health? Why is it important and why is it something that everyone on the planet, not just in this room, should actually be considering? Well, as a definition and hopefully everyone here is already aware, but One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. And so of course it's something that everyone should be critically engaged and involved with. But based within that, we need to understand the... What's up?

The microphone was creating echo, it was impossible to interpret.

When we destroy natural habitats, we increase the risk of the spillover of various pathogens, and most zoonoses come from nature. And so understanding what drives spillover is critically important if we want to prevent the next pandemic. And you may have been to some of the other One Health related events where people are talking about how do we stop a pandemic? Well, it starts with understanding why spillover happens. And unfortunately, as you will see through this talk, we're often not collecting the types of data we need in order to understand that. So, considering why it's important, over 111 recent epidemic disease outbreaks had zoonotic origins, and these included some of the most severe that we know. So, HIV/AIDS originated in wildlife. Ebola originates in wildlife. The Zaire Ebola, the most severe strain, we do not know where it comes from, so don't blame the bats. MERS and SARS also come from wildlife. In fact, both of those are beta coronaviruses, so they come from Rhinolophus horseshoe bats. In fact, overall, 60% of human emerging disease events are from zoonotic pathogens, and within that, 72% come from wildlife. And when we look across all forms of zoonotic pathogen, again, most of them come from wildlife. So understanding where and when that outbreak and that spillover occurs is crucial. So let's briefly think about what some of the roots of spillover might look like, because if we don't understand how it happens, we can't stop it from happening. So some of the most common, of course, include direct, so bite, scratch, etc. Indirect, so maybe you're drinking delicious toddy wine, but it happens to have bat saliva in. You have vector-borne diseases, so if you get bitten by a rabid dog or a Lyme or encephalitis-infected tick. And then, of course, there are various contamination-based ones. And so we can think about it a bit like this. So you have interactions between humans and wildlife, wildlife and livestock or domestic animals, and domestic animals and humans. And all of this is happening across a landscape. So as we fragment a landscape, we cause there to be interfaces between wildlife and other animals that we come into contact with. But what we also do is cause animals to have to expend much more energy in order to get enough food. We expose them to things like pesticides and other agrochemicals, so we give them chemical stresses. And this means that we are increasing the interface, but we are also increasing the stress and that exponentially increases the risk of spillover along these interfaces. And so species health ultimately reflects habitat health. And we know that spillover is often most common in highly degraded habitats because both you have more competent hosts, so things that are better at hosting pathogens, but you also have an interface that allows spillover to happen. I'm going to give a brief example. This is from our own work on Rhinolophus and other bats. So this is in Xishuangbanna in southern China. And what we found was within a single population of bats, we had more than 24 bats and we had huge number, 24 species of bats, and we had huge numbers of coronaviruses and other pathogens just in a single population. Now, what is important to note is that for many of those viruses, they were only in a single individual bat. If they are in one small bat, the chance of them spilling to a human is low. They're not even spreading between the individuals within that system. And so we need to understand what is driving it to actually spread within these systems. computer is thinking. I apologize, there have been some changes to my slides by the system, and so there should have been a map there, which appears to have disappeared. No, there should have been one here. So what you should be seeing now is the diversity of rhinolophid bats across Southeast Asia. And we can see if we look at where some of the pathogens that are most like SARS-CoV-2, it is in hotspots of some of these bats, but also where there is a high degree of degradation. What we can also do is take that information and interface the diversity of competent hosts, which is what the last map would have shown you, and we can look at that with reference to the degree of habitat fragmentation and how that relates to where there are human populations. So here in this bottom map. This again is the diversity of rhinolophus bats. Rhinolophus bats are competent for beta coronaviruses, which includes MERS and SARS. And on the top here, you have exposed human populations on the edge of habitat fragments. From that, we can use a network-based approach to where that is linked to human populations to predict where a spillover of, in this case, a coronavirus might happen. And so if we know what this looks like, we can start to develop interventions, but we can also integrate into this other eco-demographic factors. So for example, bats actually have the longest gestation and the largest baby from their body size at approximately 25% of the mother's weight at birth. If we, for example, disturbed a cave or deforested an area during the breeding season, you already have a massive eco-physiological stress, which is then being paired with something that A, causes stress, and B, causes movement. And by integrating these different factors, we can start to understand where spillover might happen, both in space and across time. So it is important to consider that whilst I showed you that previous map of exposed populations, many of these populations have been exposed to these pathogens for generations. So I've never had COVID. The best way to not get COVID is to play with bats that carry coronaviruses. Acquired immunity is part of the human condition. It's the part of all life on Earth. And so that means that whilst these populations might be exposed, they already may be immune to these pathogens. but your tourist isn't, or a high increase in propagule pressure because you've got major stresses or climate events is harder to incorporate. And so those dynamics can change quite rapidly. And what we can also do is add future planned infrastructure and see how this planned infrastructure may increase the rate of the probability of spillover. Because if you have a lovely contiguous forest, you suddenly build a road through the middle of it. Rhinolophus bats are bad at dispersing, meaning that crossing that road is high stress. and you are exposing populations, probably migrant workers, that do not have immunity, and so you have an enhanced risk of spillover. And so if we look at what it looks like across Southeast Asia, this is changing risk with new infrastructure. And if we just zoom into Borneo, where there is the Pan Borneo Highway planned, Those red areas show an increased risk of the spillover of beta coronaviruses based on the distribution of planned infrastructure. Now, if I know this is my risk, I can start to say, how do I reduce this risk? I could put in my infrastructure at times when there aren't already eco-physiological stress events, so my bats aren't pregnant or lactating, and I can make sure I'm not doing it during climate extremes, which also causes another form of stress. So to understand where spillover may occur, we need to understand the risks both spatially and temporally. There are two major factors that drive up spillover risk. One of them is the interface between your host, your reservoir, which might be a bat, and the other is the risk factor in terms of the propagule pressure. And so The loss of habitat as well as the degradation of habitat increases both of these at the same time. And if we also add into this key demographic periods like breeding, migration, or hibernation, if we cause those other stress factors during times of the year when there is already high ecophysiological stress, we massively increase the risk of spillover. Now, the bad news is that we have data on this for vanishingly few systems. In fact, The only good case study that we have is for Hendra, and you can predict exactly when Hendra will spill over into horses in Australia by understanding when there is deforestation and extreme climate events. And by understanding the movement of the animals because of deforestation, a lack of food at a critical time of the year, and what that means to movement, we can start to understand across space and time when the highest rate risk of spillover occurs. So understanding when spillover may occur, we need to understand the risks spatially and temporally. These include ecophysiological stressors, ecophysiological dampeners like hibernation when the immune system is underactive. It includes environmental stressors such as extreme climate events that might be extreme drought, extreme heat, it could be flooding. It includes factors that increase the energy expenditure, other stressors. agrochemicals. Bats are highly at risk from agrochemicals. Part of their respiration is through their wings. And so actually, if they now have to fly through a plantation and they're exposed to pesticide, it massively increases the risk. And we can actually group these. So you have natural and predictable factors. You have natural and stochastic factors like extreme climate events. And you have human factors. And if these co-occur, we massively increase the risk. And so what we can see is if you look at these in combination, that area in the middle, you have an extremely high chance of spillover. And so by planning how we manage the interventions and how we manage the environment, we do have a reasonable chance of combating when spillover may occur. And of course, all of this happens when you have an interface between competent hosts like bats and reservoirs or animals that we come into contact with. And the best animals to do that, your cat or your dog, because your cat will go and play with that bat outside and then it will come and lick your face. And there is no better exposure than an animal that has just licked its backside and licked your face because we are in close contact with those animals. And so it is a high throughput mechanism for transferring pathogens to you from wild animals. We can also look at what this looks like on a landscape level, and this also matters in terms of preventing those risks. So if you look here, here is a natural system. Within a natural system, before we destroy everything, those pathogens are unlikely to spill into other populations. But it's on the interfaces that these occur. And if you look at how this happens, it is much more likely to happen if you are causing animals to have to move out of that habitat. Mitigating the risk, understanding where those interfaces exist and how those factors that increase the risk vary temporally. We can map these out, but unfortunately that research is regularly siloed. And this means managing these systems to reduce those mechanisms and that spillover is really hard. Now the next question you might have is, well, where do we have the data? Well, here, the only areas with very strict regulations to stop animals coming in is Australia. Even within Europe, bringing in wildlife has relatively little screening, and the screening that exists is only for a subset of pathogens that are common in crop plants, or if we were looking at zoosanitary risks, they are common agricultural diseases of livestock, and a small number that are common in pets. The first time monkeypox had a major outbreak in the US was when Ghanaian rats were transported into the US as pets. They were housed next to prairie dogs. They contracted the monkeypox between the rats and the prairie dogs, and the prairie dogs were then taken into people's homes and caused almost 50 cases of monkeypox. There was no screening because in 2013 when this happened, monkeypox was a poorly known pathogen. And so it's very easy for these pathogens to get spread because we are not screening for the majority of them. And it gets worse. If we look globally, and this is from a paper we recently published, we wanted to understand the degree of bio surveillance in most of the world, i.e. are we going out to wildlife populations and seeing what they might carry? And the answer is, almost never. There are rarely routine proactive surveys for most pathogens, and even with the increasing spread of avian flu around the world, most of these are targeted at either subpopulations or they are based on when we start seeing potential symptoms, and we need much stronger mechanisms for bio-surveillance. What we can also do is look at what security measures we're taking. And you can see in terms of understanding what is coming into the country, we're not doing well. But when it comes to understanding pathogens that are already in wildlife, we are doing almost nothing. Furthermore, even when research occurs, it is typically virologists going and saying, I can catch as many viruses in my animals as possible.

But they may not record the species or the sex or the conditions of the habitat. And they may lump three months of data together. So I don't know if my bat was pregnant or I don't know if it was just a juvenile. The reason that those variables are important is unless we have those types of data, we cannot understand the mechanistic factors that drive spillover. All we can do is collect a stamp collection of these are pathogens in the wild. Unless ecologists work with virologists, we will never have the mechanistic understanding to understand what is driving the spillover. If we don't have that data, we can't prevent it. So this is the type of model we should be working towards, moving from a proactive system where we are looking at what is in the landscape And then at each stage of the system, and anyone who wants the paper that has this in full, you can see that the interventions that should be implemented vary along how far you are on this train of an outbreak. If we could shift our efforts to the blue stage, there would be huge economic gains because we would have fewer spillovers. And that impacts our wildlife because there are epizootics, diseases of wildlife also spreading around the world. and containing a pathogen once it has spilled over is tremendously hard, as we saw with COVID. And so we need to shift our energy to the blue side so we don't always have to work on containment. So in synthesis, and before I move to my very capable panel, understanding how bats and other species use landscapes is critical. If we can maintain healthy populations and reduce the interface between competent hosts and animals to which they might spread pathogens into, we can vastly reduce the opportunity for future spillover. However, we're very good at degrading the landscape, and that means not only do we lose vital services like pollination, but we exponentially increase the risk of spillover. And whilst we're very good at talking about ecosystem services, We tend to forget ecosystem disservices, which is the active upregulation of risks based on degrading the environment. And we need to think about those consequences too. Ecological security and ecosystem health are critical to our own security. And part of that involves managing the ecosystem to contain and reduce these risks. And that is something that we are fundamentally bad at doing. Most animals respond to stress by becoming more vulnerable to pathogens. Destroying the environment drives up these stresses. Destroying these environments also increases the interface and causes animals to move more, exponentially increasing the risk of spillover occurring, as well as that higher propagule pressure, meaning they are shedding more of any pathogen they are carrying, and they are more likely to come into contact with animals that they could pick up a pathogen from. One Health means we need to consider species ecology, eco physiology and behavior as well as the landscape. It is a call for more collaboration in a world of increasing numbers of silos, because unless we collaborate, we cannot develop the solutions we need to have a healthy environment, healthy species, and a healthy future for all of us. So with that, I'd like to say thank you, and I will hand back to the chair. Thank you all for listening.

Thank you, Alice. That was great presentation. Thank you. And like the explicit on the interlinkage. Please write down your questions so we can come back to them. But they by the end, so we will have time to receive questions from you. So we are now going to continue with Paula Ribeiro. She's a senior program coordinator for Forests and Grasslands and unit at the AUCN. So Paula will talk about wildlife here.

Thank you, let me just put my slides on. Wait, one second, sorry.

Oh, yeah.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about how we can translate this One Health complexity into the real world. And I'm going to talk more about considering the ecosystem lens. So I work for a UCN, so we work mostly with the ecosystem health part. But first thing, what is ecosystem health that we talk so much about? we don't even know how to define ecosystem health. And then I think every time we talk about pandemic risk and et cetera, every time we talk about forest restoration or ecosystem restoration, we will also have this understanding that is going to automatically create positive benefits for human health and is going to prevent pandemics. I think this is what we hear most. I just want to ask to everyone in this room if you ever heard about this, that ecosystem restoration is one of the main mechanisms to avoid pandemics. I think everyone heard about that, right? So here, what we're trying to show is that it's not that simple. So why ecosystem restoration is so important? I think everyone knows that almost between 20 and 40% of the global land is currently degraded. And because of that, we have massive efforts to restore. So we have the Bonn Challenge that has pledged to restore more than 200 million hectares around the world. We also have Target 2 that wants to restore 30% of all degraded ecosystems. We have the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration that is going to finish now in 2030. And we have a new one that is going to start in 2027, if I'm not mistaken. So we have a lot of effort happening to restore those degraded lands. However, most of these ecosystem restoration efforts are also happening in what we call the global hotspots of emerging infectious diseases. So if you look at this map in the top of the slides, the very yellow areas are the one that consider the hotspots for emerging infectious disease. And if you look at the bottom of the slides in the red are the areas that also have a higher suitability for ecosystem restoration. So what we see is that most of those efforts are happening in areas that are also hotspot for those pandemics or those spillovers to emerge. And when we think about ecosystem restoration, what do you think? I think everyone thinks about an area that was degraded and suddenly is restored. However, ecosystem restoration is a process, is a long process that can take decades, not years, 40 years, 50 years. And while we are into this process, we are putting more people. in those areas that are degraded, we are creating more degradation because we are creating more suitable habitats for vectors, hosts, and we are putting a lot of people in the middle of those areas that can be exposed to those new vectors and hosts that were not there before. And we also have the dogs, as Alice we also have those domestic animals that can carry, can amplify those pathogens and can increase exposure. So what happens that in reality, restoration is a process that can potentially increase risks during a long time or during long part of this process. So what we are trying to do, oh, and just to finish this, and why it is so important to talk about that is because Unfortunately, we have all those efforts, but no one is really integrating one health into restoration. And this can create trade-offs. And just to know that we really don't know much about how ecosystem restoration can affect human health, zoonotic diseases, and et cetera. We just don't have enough evidence. We are just starting to study that. However, we know that this can be context dependent and we can have trade-offs. So for some diseases, we can have an improved risk, for others, we can have a decreased risk. So we just don't know yet. That's why it's so important to start integrating this risk into ecosystem restoration. So together with several partners and with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, IUCN is going to launch officially those guidelines that's called Restoring Ecosystems protecting health on the Ecosystem Restoration Day on the 29th, where we are really trying to integrate those risks since the first beginning of the process. And because we already have several tools to analyze both One Health risk and restoration, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. So the idea is really to bring everything that is already being used by ecosystem restoration practitioners who is doing those activities in the ground, what do they use. They use the standards of ecosystem restoration. So how we can integrate what we already have into that. So we are using the map act and create tool that was a tool created specifically to assess risk into protected areas. And we are adapting those tools to match the standards of ecosystem restoration. So the standards, they are split in five phases, the assessment, the planning, the implementation, the ongoing management and the monitoring, and then each tool is incorporated in one of those phases. So the idea here is really to One, first thing, you start assessing the risks. So when you start planning your activities in the ground, you need to have a cross-sectoral collaboration with different sectors, public health, animal health, and et cetera, and try to identify which diseases are occurring in the region, which diseases can emerge if you don't know, and try to prioritize which diseases are going to be or can be important during this process. And what are the exposures, as Alice mentioned, like what makes people or animal exposed to those pathogens and why they are vulnerable to those pathogens. Knowing that, we start planning. So how we can really integrate preventive measures into the restoration cycle. together again with this cross-sector collaboration, like with different sectors, we need to start integrate what we call health safeguards. So if I have, for example, a risk of hantavirus, what do I need to do during my entire process to make sure that people won't have contact with rodents excreta and et cetera. So during this phase, I just forgot one thing. During the assessment phase, we are basing the entire assessment into four questions. What diseases are occurring? Who is involved? So who are the hosts and vectors? How those pathogens are transmitted and when? Because if you also know the cycles, the temporality, as Alice mentioned, we can also try to avoid some activities during those times. Then we do move to the planning phase, and then we need to act on four steps to try to avoid, to mediate, to monitor and to mend. We know that sometimes some risks are very difficult to avoid. So what do we need to do if that happen during this process? And then we move to the implementation phase where we're going to also track everything that we did. So all those health safeguards, they are in practice now, so we can really evaluate if they are working. And then we move to the management, the ongoing management, where we need to reevaluate everything that is happening every year to make sure that what we define it as health safeguards, they are really working. And then we need to have ongoing monitoring and evaluation to make sure that our health safeguards are really being translated into reduced risks. So this is the idea, it's very brief. So, but here are the guidelines. You can scan this QR code and you can download this massive document with 120 pages, very descriptive of each phase, but please use it. And I think this is a start on how we can really start to integrate One Health into ecosystem management, 'cause we do really talk a lot about ecosystem being, ecosystem loss being one of the drivers of human health loss. but how we will integrate and how we really can change that. So it's very complex. There is no like do that or do the other thing, but I think at least we can reduce risk by trying to have those assessment and different phases. Thank you.

Thank you, Paula. That was amazing. Thank you and very specific guidelines on how to mainstream the biodiversity and health approach in the actions that we're conducting to approach the CBD and to accomplish the CBD. So, sorry, we have the slides are in a different order, so we're coming back to wildlife. So please just wait a little second. Okay. Thank you, sorry. So we're gonna have now Francesca from the, she's a wildlife veterinarian and research associate at the Smithsonian Global Health Program in Kenya. And she's gonna talk about rhinos and also conservation at this location.

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy to share some practical lessons on integrating wildlife health and conservation translocations and ecosystem restoration. in particular from our work in Kenya with the Rhino Range Expansion Initiative. So first of all, not many of you might be familiar with the term conservation translocation. This is the intentional movement and release of a living organism where the primary objective is a conservation benefit. And conservation translocation can happen within the indigenous range of the species, so in that case, it's either reinforcement or restoration, or it can also happen outside the indigenous range, so it's a conservation introduction, which means it's something quite complex. In general, conservation translocations are quite complex, they start with very hectic captures, you can see this rhino being chased by a helicopter, these animals undergo very dangerous anesthesia, we use very potent narcotics. They go through long transports and then they are released in new environment. And looking at this photo on the release of a rhino, I think we should focus on two things. One is the potential co-benefits of these reintroductions. So we can have benefits on the conservation of the species, conservation of other species in the ecosystem. potentially restoration or functional connectivity, and also potential co-benefits for the people living alongside these animals. But on the other side, we had huge risks. We have risk for the animals being released, for their health and welfare, sometimes they die during these operations, unfortunately. There is risk in terms of pathogen transmission, as we have heard, so also in conservation translocation, we have this problem. There are risks for invasive species, risk for the ecological balance, and social risk, and risk of conflicts. So a lot of risk. And this might seem a very technical topic, but actually is also relevant for policy. In particular, conservation translocations are considered urgent management actions for target four, but they're also important for target two. So for restoration, very often restoration also has wildlife introductions. but they also have broader links with other targets in the GBF, in particular the first eight that aim to reduce threats to biodiversity. And they are also important for the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health and the guidance on sustainable wildlife management. We just had a side event two days ago on this topic. And this is important because conservation translocations are also forms of human-mediated wildlife movement. So they happen for different purposes compared to trade, but they have very similar challenges. So they should have similar principles and safeguards. But I would like to show a case studies on what we're doing in Kenya and how this applies. So first, some context on what is the Kenya Rhino Range Expansion Initiative. It's an initiative led by the Kenyan government, and it's here because of our conservation success story that turned into a new challenge. So Eastern black rhinos are critically endangered, and 90% of them are in Kenya. So Kenya is the hotspot for Eastern black rhinos. They were 20,000 in the 70s and because of the poaching crisis they went down to 381 individuals in 1990. Right now we have 1,000 and most of them live in areas that have exceeded carrying capacity because to protect them from poaching there is small sanctuaries that are fenced. So the goal of the Kenyan government is to restore rhino ancestral range. You can see in the map, this is Northern Kenya, and the areas in black is where the rhinos are right now. And the other colors are where rhinos will be reintroduced in the next 20 years. So this is an initiative that aims to recover rhinos, but at the same time, aims to use rhinos as a catalyst for landscape connectivity and restoration. to have a broader impacts on other species for their conservation and also to support livelihoods of communities. But this is a very ambitious initiative. So the question is, how do we make sure that we have enough science and monitoring in place to track the success? So this is why we brought together 50 experts just a few months ago, from government to academia, to communities and conservation managers to discuss which kind of knowledge do we need and monitoring do we need to put in place to make sure that we really track the success of the initiative across different areas. So that's why the conversation was around five fundamental objectives that are embedded in the initiative. to make sure that we understand the different dimension of success and also the trade-offs involved. So the first one is to make sure that we increase rhino numbers, of course, and that their population is viable in the long term. The second one is to minimize negative effects on their health, but not only on rhino health, also on other wildlife health, on the livestock, and potentially on people. The third one is to minimize negative impact on other species in the landscape, actually to try to prove that there can be conservation impact on also other species. Fourth, landscape ecology, so to understand if reintroducing rhinos we can really improve functional connectivity and hopefully also restore the landscape, and to understand how we can support the livelihoods of people and to improve coexistence. So this is a very early framework, we don't have any results yet and we haven't developed yet the monitoring framework, but I think it can show that an initiative led by species recovery can support goals within the section of restoration, conservation and One Health, so supporting the biodiversity and health relationship. But we need a science-driven, integrated monitoring framework, and this is very important to support the adaptive management of the whole initiative and hopefully also to communicate back to national and global policy goals and hopefully to make policymakers care about also species reintroductions. That is also very often an overlooked topic. Thank you.

Thank you, Francesca. That was amazing. And it's also like a very practical case on how to mainstream this approach in the actions that we're doing in the CVD, that species is a big flag and many translocation, reintroduction occurring and probably not considering this. a criterion approach. So finally in this panel to finish the presentations, we're going to have Sevan, which is an international affairs and science policy specialist in biodiversity and one health. And it will be great because you're giving like a socio-ecosystem approach in health. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Carolina. And let me also thank the organizers of the Science Policy Forum and of this session for having me today, and in particular, Jesse Monier, Gilles Sion, and Britta Garfield. So first, I would like to start with a word on the scientific evidence linking biodiversity and zoonotic disease emergence. understanding and integrating into environmental factors driving these risks is of course essential. This is what this first slide is all about, and this is also the focus, this was the focus of our brilliant introductory presentation from Alice. So obviously I won't go into detail on this. What I want to emphasize is this. We are not lacking scientific evidence. Knowledge is everywhere, it's abundant, and we discussed it in another panel yesterday. But yet progress remains really slow, and too slow. We must do more to turn this knowledge into action. And this is precisely the challenge of the Global Plan of Action on Biodiversity and Health, but also the PREZOT initiative, the Nature for Health initiative, and other major initiatives, all working to improve ecosystem management and prevent zoonotic risk sources. So I am part of the PREZOT initiative, standing for Preventing Zoonotic Disease Emergences. And you can see here the scientific and operational agenda of the initiative, which I am also not going to describe in detail because this would take an hour, but directly focusing on its pillar two, in which we act on this ecological and socioeconomic processes that create risky interfaces, such as land use change, habitat degradation, agricultural practices, livestock-wildlife interactions, and the environmental conditions that favor vectors. More specifically, we work in biodiversity hotspots, and we work closely with local communities to develop and implement practical measures that address the interconnected human, animal, and ecosystem health challenges and generate co-benefits. And this is what we call prevention at source. And I take an example here. The work done in the Azamco appraisal project at the Thai-Lao border examines community forests, which are part of what we call OECMs, as conserved areas allowing active and passive rewinding, reforestation, together with health risk management, such as water control, control of vector-borne diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and so on. So community forest constitute a holistic solution to protect ecosystems, reduce zoonotic risk and improve population well-being in a very context-specific manner. Also at the Thai-Lao border, the ASAMCO project works at the wildlife-livestock interface to promote a land-sharing approach, reconciling ecosystem conservation with sustainable livestock production, while managing pathogen circulation across species. We know that pastoralism can support biodiversity and health by helping regenerate grasslands and turning natural vegetation into food and non-food products. And here the Azamko project brings together rangers, pastoralists, and the public livestock department and services to develop resilient practices that really balance potentially competing interests while reducing disease transmission risks between livestock and wild animals. So beyond Prizad, working closely with communities is at the heart of what CIRAD, my institute, is doing with its partners all over the world. And what we learned around this journey on One Health is that at all levels, actually, the environment and biodiversity component remain insufficiently integrated into One Health approaches. And my feeling is that this is already true at the level of One Health scientists who inevitably have their own disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives. and do not always fully embrace the multiple dimensions of One Health. This is at least what I can observe in my own institute. At other scales, and although the 2021 OLEP definition fully recognizes the close links and interdependency with the environment, which marked a major step forward in this respect, We still see significant gaps in the integration of biodiversity and environment into national strategies and One Health platforms themselves. So we propose a shift to what we call socio-ecosystem health. And you may well say, well, another One Health related concept. Well, perhaps, but let me highlight what is new. The health issues and their drivers are broadly similar everywhere. Disease emergence and biodiversity are complex, so-called wicked problems. They involve multiple disciplines, they involve different knowledge systems and socio-economic sectors. But on the ground, the concrete ways to safeguard health and well-being within resilient ecosystems are highly context specific and must be tailored to each territory. So what the concept of health of socioecosystems brings to the discussion is really the local imperative. The territorial scale is the only appropriate scale for deploying transformative One Health approaches. And as you see, my message is fully in line with the previous session and everything it contributed to territorial approaches. So moving from the what to the how is, in our perspective, key to systemic resilience. Each territory must define its own health issues based on cultural perceptions, local knowledge, and the socio-ecological representations of the stakeholders that actually live in it. And another dimension I would like to bring into the discussion is agriculture. As someone working at a research institute focused on tropical agriculture, I believe agriculture and food systems have lots to bring to the discussion. Of course, agriculture is a major driver of biodiversity loss. This is well established. But it's also a key source of livelihoods for local communities and is essential to countries' food security. So, agriculture must and can be part of the solution. Approaches such as agroecology or holistic range management can help reconcile productive activities with biodiversity protection and ecosystem health. And let me make it concrete with the example of a socio-ecosystem health approach applied to redesigning local agricultural systems around the Lac de Gueas in Senegal. The Lac de Gueas face major challenges. In particular, overfishing threatens both biodiversity and food security. while agricultural pollution affects the water that supplies 60% of Dakar drinking water, which really raises serious health concerns. And through the AFD Sante et Territoire project, we have established and facilitating living labs that bring together all concerned stakeholders. to identify the specific challenges, and most importantly, to co-construct the solutions. And these solutions consisted mainly in diversifying fishermen's sources of income, co-managing fisheries alongside with farming, alongside with fish farming, with livestock raising, and sustainable agriculture. and promoting agroecology to restore biodiversity in crops and in soils. Also, integrating livestock into farming systems helps reconciling to restore natural soil fertility cycle, benefiting agriculture, but also water quality and the wider health of the communities. And we are running such approaches in several other regions of the global south. And what we can say is that really living lab experiments offer real opportunities for dialogue between science, policy, and society at the local level to benefit the health of the whole territory. Such local platforms, they foster a sense of joint responsibility among stakeholders. They also smooth power relations between stakeholders, but also between North and South when it is part of the equation. And they facilitate solutions that are both applicable and really applied. And I think that the IUCN framework and guidelines will also help us a lot in our future practices. So thanks, Paola, for this. But This also implies that scientists are able to kind of step away from their traditional position of expertise and accept a certain loss of control. And I propose this as one of my key takeaways for consideration by the Science Forum. Thank you very much.