IPBES 2nd Capacity Building Forum sees Capacity Building Rolling Plan take shape
The 2nd IPBES Capacity Building Forum took place in New York on 23 September 2016.
During the technical session of the IPBES* Capacity Building forum in the morning, participants discussed the Capacity Building Rolling plan at length. Apart from the IPBES Chair, the Secretary and IPBES taskforce members and members from the technical support units, various UN organizations and other stakeholder groups attended the meeting.
Discussions focused mainly on the three pronged strategy such as capacity building for the current work programme and its deliverables, enhancing the uptake of IPBES outputs, and a future strategy for building national level implementation plans. Naoya Tsukamoto and Unnikrishnan Payyappalimana from UNU-IAS encouraged advancing the processes of engaging with stakeholder networks such as RCEs and the Satoyama Initiative and the need for endorsing the capacity building activities carried out by these network partners. This would enhance not only uptake of IPBES deliverables, but also build better networking towards future national implementation strategies. They also stressed the importance of engaging with civil societies and education communities for advancing transformative action within communities and regions.
This session was followed by a high-level event attended by UNDP, UNEP, and the World Economic Forum among others and ministerial delegations from some countries including Norway, France, Germany, and Sweden. During the final session the next steps were formalized including the revision of the Capacity Building Rolling Plan, based on the suggestions and recommendations of the meeting.
*The Intergovernmental Platform on Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity (IPBES) was established in 2012 to contribute to science-policy interface for biodiversity related multinational environmental conventions. IPBES provides four key functions: (i) scientific assessment, (ii) capacity building, (iii) knowledge generation and (iv) policy support. Since 2011, UNU-IAS has been assisting in the development of the IPBES assessment process by organizing informal and formal international scientific expert workshops, in collaboration with UNESCO, UNEP, IHDP and the Ministry of Environment, Japan. Since 2014, UNU-IAS also has a postgraduate training programme on biodiversity and ecosystem services to contribute to the capacity-building function of IPBES. More information can be found here.
