The Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is an organization that aims to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being, and sustainable development. Based in Bonn, IPBES provides insights and key data for policymakers and those in decision-making roles for biodiversity conservation at a scientific level. IPBES strongly believes that the engagement of young people in the work of IPBES is extremely relevant to supporting the uptake of IPBES assessments among young people as well as other individuals and organizations.
Over the years, IPBES has promoted a broader notion of nature’s contributions to people which emphasizes that culture is central to all links between people and nature, and recognizes other knowledge systems, for example, those of local communities and indigenous peoples, much more than before.
As part of this mandate, the IPBES Capacity Building Task Force organized a workshop for the youth on the Isle of Vilm, Germany in 2022, in which 23 youths representing different international organizations from six UN regions participated to understand the inner workings of IPBES and the implications of IPBES’ work on the global diversity community.
This understanding and the knowledge gained is particularly important for the future potential relationships built both between youths and youth organizations and with IPBES. Vinamra Mathur represented Y4N at this workshop in which participants were introduced to the Nature Futures Framework (NFF), a tool to support the development of scenarios and models of desirable futures for people, nature, and Mother Earth.
The workshop was for 3 days, each with a goal to improve and build the capacities of young individuals to enable and facilitate their participation in the work of IPBES. The first day aimed to provide an understanding the science-policy interface of IPBES with a focus on showcasing the approved and ongoing global assessments.
The second day was focused on introducing the NFF in which three main ways of valuing nature were introduced:
Nature for Nature
Nature for Society
Nature for Culture
The third and last day was spent presenting the discussions from the previous day in a creative manner. Even though the three “pillars” introduced three different ways of valuing nature, they each shared pathways to achieve desirable futures, some of which included transforming food systems, reinventing education and governance systems, and ensuring indigenous and local knowledge, all of which are at the forefront of decision-making processes. The NFF forms the foundation for developing scenarios of positive futures for nature. The NFF places relationships between people and nature at its core. Because people relate to nature in multiple ways, there are a wide variety of desirable nature futures, with different goals and visions which can be synergistic or in conflict with one another.
Y4N strongly shares the same notion of building youth capacity in decision-making process and it enables us as an organization working in the climate-nature nexus to be able to build our own capacity and further strengthen our position within the biodiversity space.
The workshop was organized by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with support from the IPBES Technical Support Unit on Capacity-building and contributions from members of the IPBES fellowship programme and task force on scenarios and models.
See the illustration to fully understand what happened during the workshop.
If you are interested to join a youth workshop please check this link: https://www.bfn.de/en/events-ina/regional-youth-workshop-ipbes-europe-and-central-asia-2023
Author: Vinamra Mathur