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Expand scientific input to address environmental effects

Nature volume 465, page 869 (2010)Cite this article

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The proposed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Nature 465, 525; 2010) should be part of a broader complementary system of scientific input. This would help to coordinate data that fall under the remit of multiple international environmental agencies and agreements. And it would minimize the risks of duplication in scientific review and reporting.

A global consultation of scientists and others, coordinated by DesertNet International and the United Nations Institute for Water, Environment and Health (http://www.desertnet-international.org), has suggested that an equivalent intergovernmental science-policy panel for land and water issues is needed. Otherwise, important independent questions are likely to be absorbed by the scientific bodies that advise on climate change and biodiversity loss.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Lindsay C. Stringer

  2. United Nations University, Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Hamilton, l8P 0A1, Ontario, Canada

    Richard J. Thomas

  3. Secretariat DesertNet International, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, 22609, Germany

    Mariam Akhtar-Schuster

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  1. Lindsay C. Stringer
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  2. Richard J. Thomas
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  3. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster
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Stringer, L., Thomas, R. & Akhtar-Schuster, M. Expand scientific input to address environmental effects. Nature 465, 869 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465869c

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Comments

Commenting on this article is now closed.

  1. Alfonso Lag

    I think that an intergovernmental science-policy panel would help to evaluate properly water and land issues, which otherwise would lose importance regarding other global issues.

  2. AVELINO NUNEZ-DELGADO

    I agree: an intergovernmental science-policy panel for land and water issues is needed.
    The world is complicated, even more in the middle of crises and irrational speculative handlings causing that the real is relativized and becomes unreal, and viceversa.
    This way, it may resemble that the work of the scientists loses part of its meaning, since it can be merged in the dark by a hand that decides that evident and relevant facts for the healthiness of the environment, and for the welfare of the people, do not deserve attention, and they not even at least deserve to be spread. But, any case, we must give our best. And the vision of the specialists in soil and water can help to achieve a better science and ?why not- a better world.
    There will be time to let politicians decide what is made with the objective information.
    We have not to stop trying that the world goes to better, or at least that does not worsen in a fast way.

  3. Joan Llovet Lopez

    I agree with the need for an equivalent intergovernmental panel on land and water issues. I do not doubt that scientists, managers and other people could collaborate with the proposed platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES) in a capable and effective way. Moreover, a panel on land and water issues could complement and broaden the current strategies for fighting against and adapting to climate change. I am referring to the obvious possibility that climate change, besides affecting socio-economic factors, could also affect population distributions and, thus, land and water use, which in turn would affect social and environmental issues, including biodiversity and ecosystem services.

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