By: Julian Gutt

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) announces the "First Order Draft" of its Global Assessment Report to be reviewed soon.

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Sevices (IPBES) announces the "First Order Draft" of its Global Assessment Report to be reviewed by experts soon. For the announcement click here.

IPBES is an organization similar to IPCC but with foci on biodiversity and all ecosystem services. One reason that marine issues are not overrepresented might be the UN World Ocean Assessment, released only approx. 1 yr ago. Nevertheless the IPBES assessment would not be a Global Assessment without a good visibility of the oceans and the Antarctic.

I personally contribute as a lead author to a couple of text sections, mostly in the "Nature" part but not to all marine text pieces. The few marine experts can unfortunately not equally cover all aspects of global marine biodiversity and ecosystem services and we have to consider general constraints, such as word limits and assessment writing style. Thus, some scientific impreciseness or single gaps concerning information being important in the IPBES context could result from these conditions.

Due to these reasons and because we aim to finally provide a first-class assessment I would like to encourage you to be prepared to subscribe as a potential "external expert reviewer" for the "First Order Draft" of the IPBES Global Assessment. Feel free also to circulate this announcement by the IPBES Executive Secretary within your institute or scientific community. Please notice this is only an announcement not yet a call. You find further information on the IPBES mission here and for my contributions feel free to click here.