An IU professor was named co-chair of a global assessment which will seek to give global and national policy makers scientific research on biodiversity and ecosystems, according to a release.
Eduardo S. Brondízio, a professor in the department of anthropology, met with future authors of the report and his co-chairs Aug. 15 in Germany to begin the assessment.
The assessment was comissioned by a United Nations-affiliated environmental organization.
“It is an honor to be selected as a co-chair on this ambitious and ground-breaking effort,” Brondízio said in the release.
The report will be multidisciplinary, drawing from a variety of research.
“We are confident that, by combining evidence from both the scientific literature and indigenous and local knowledge, this landmark assessment will inform long-term national and international efforts to halt environmental degradation and advance the rights of people to healthy ecosystems.”
The report will address current information on human-environmental interaction, causes of ecological change and how nature helps humanity, according to the release.
The report is expected to be reviewed for the first time by mid-2017,
The report will also likely provide information on UN progress regarding biodiversity and inform future global reports on the matter.
Brondízio’s expertise lies in how humans interact with their environment.
He spent three decades researching this topic in the Amazon rain forest, according to the release.
In the last decade, Brondízio has researched urban development and governence of indigenous regions in the Amazon, according to his IU Department of Anthropology biography.
Brondízio has worked with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the organization commissioning the report, for four years, according to the release.
Nearly 150 people will co-author the report.
IPBES includes over 125 member states.
Sandra Díaz of the National University of Córdoba in Argentina and Josef Settele of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany will co-lead the assessment alongside Brondízio, according to the release.
“This assessment will offer a much-needed update on the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services, which was last reviewed more than a decade ago,” said Anne Larigauderie, IPBES executive secretary, said in the release.
Larigauderie went on to say that the effort is also working to encompass multiple views and values from all over the world.
“In addition to its unprecedented intergovernmental mandate, it is guided by the IPBES conceptual framework, which recognizes different world views and incorporates a wide range of values and knowledge systems including, for the first time, vital indigenous and local knowledge,” she said.
Nyssa Kruse
