Photo: Courtesy IPBES

The fifth Meeting of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) Task Force on Capacity-building, was held at the Norwegian Environment Agency, in Trondheim, Norway, on 26-28 April 2017. Naoya Tsukamoto and Unnikrishnan Payyappallimana represented UNU-IAS at the meeting. 

As a follow up to the rolling out plan approved earlier this year on IPBES Capacity Building activities, the meeting focussed on the implementation of specific capacity building plans for  2017-2018 and on consolidating contributions, thereby strengthening the collaboration of the contributing organizations. 

All partner institutions, including UNU-IAS, had been asked to submit ongoing and potential activities that would contribute to the rolling out plan. After discussing the progress made by the capacity building taskforce and its partners, a one-year workplan and the different institutional processes and linkages were shared. UNU-IAS had submitted a detailed summary of the potential contribution of the institute and its various networks. 

To engage the different stakeholders, four groups discussed, in a world café format, below important topics:

1) Learning and engagement

2) Building and supporting communities of practice

3) Bridging with Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) Systems and facilitating access to data, information and knowledge

4) Promoting and facilitating national and sub-regional ecosystem assessments as well as promoting and facilitating national and regional platforms and networks.

The meeting concluded with participants agreeing on specific governance structures, implementation activities, roles and responsibilities for action, timelines, and defined partnerships and contributions. Five task groups were formed to discuss the follow up actions. Unnikrishnan Payyappallimana joined the task group on 'Developing guidance regarding processes and mechanisms that support the implementation of the capacity-building rolling plan' and the group on 'Learning Materials'.

¨The meeting was a good opportunity to have more clarity on the modalities of engagement and it was a good opportunity for some bilateral discussions with other partner institutions such as UNEP-WCMC* and the Convention on Biological Diversity in terms of focused collaboration,¨ he said. The discussions between UNU-IAS and IPBES ultimately concluded with the signing of a Letter of Agreement on 24 July 2017 at the United Nations University Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.

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*UNEP-WCMC - United Nations Environment Programme - World Conservation Monitoring Centre