The Cambridge contribution to the development of Global Ecosystems Models for use in IPBES and other global biodiversity assessments

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is starting to become operational and has set up working groups to advise on various important issues. One of the working groups addresses IPBES deliverable 3(c) – Policy support tools and methodologies for scenario analysis and modelling of biodiversity and ecosystem services. This will contribute to a proposed fast track assessment of scenarios and modelling of biodiversity and nature’s benefits to people, including ecosystem services, is to establish the foundations for the use of scenarios and models in activities under IPBES in order to provide insights into the impacts of plausible future socioeconomic development pathways and policy options on biodiversity and nature’s benefits to people, including ecosystem services, and to help evaluate actions that can be taken to protect them in terrestrial, inland water and marine ecosystems. This CCI project will: first, review the operation of as many modelling tools that use scenarios to assess their potential application for IPBES; second, use the existing Cambridge based models that might have application to IPBES (developed by the Geography Department, UNEP-WCMC, and external partners in Microsoft Research and the Natural History Museum in London) to explore ways these models might be integrated and deliver outputs of enhanced relevance; and third, work alongside the relevant IPBES working group to make the Cambridge-based models visible as potential inputs to the IPBES fast track assessment process.