ABSTRACT
Describing IPBES2 as simply an ‘IPCC3 for biodiversity’ would be overly simplistic. Indeed, these two institutions have major differences that have been underlined on several occasions.4 These differences are the result of fundamental structuring aspects: the respective themes of these institutions, the institutional context surrounding their establishment and their mandate. Concerning their themes, it is no longer necessary nowadays to engage in a
lengthy demonstration to illustrate that climate and biodiversity5 are facing major crises that call for swift and global responses. However, although climate change is the prime example of a global crisis, biodiversity constitutes an element that is intrinsically linked to territories as each region has to deal with specific yet connected threats. Moreover, biodiversity is not uniformly distributed among territories. Some countries, known as ‘mega-diverse’, have a higher degree of biological diversity and a vast majority of these are developing countries. As such, we can see through this notion the resurgence of the South/North divide in environmental debates. This strong link between biodiversity and territories also allows for a salient influence of the concept of permanent sovereignty over natural resources. Debates and negotiations for the establishment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and within its fora are clearly heavily influenced by these eminently political and legal considerations. IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were
negotiated and established in very different institutional contexts. IPCC was founded prior to the adoption of the United Nation Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)6 and it even took part in discussions that led to the Convention’s adoption,7 whereas IPBES has had to fit into in a very crowded institutional environment. Major conventions on biodiversity and ecosystems have existed for decades and constitute a regime complex, which is understood as being an accumulation of overlapping regimes with no hierarchy8 and various types of interaction.9 Alongside these conventions, several UN institutions are also actively working on this broad theme, most notably UNEP, UNDP, FAO and UNESCO10 (which are among the main IPBES partners). The establishment of IPBES therefore raises the necessary question of how it will interact with numerous actors of the system.
