ABSTRACT
The first part of the book deals with the status of IPBES in the biodiversity regime complex and beyond, and with the way the platform tries to create coordination between and within the different elements of regime complexes. The first six chapters analyze the creation and governance of IPBES in highlighting the historical and political opportunities and constraints which led to the creation of IPBES. The increased overlap of institutions, agreements and organizations involved in international biodiversity policy promotes the circulation of actors and the transfer of legal, policy, procedural and
institutional norms between and within the environmental regime complex. The strong influence of the IPCC model on IPBES fully illustrates this process. However, the creation of IPBES in this institutional complexity context has forced the new Platform to adapt its procedures and operations to the expectations of the various stakeholders involved in biodiversity and its emergence. Thus, the analysis of the genesis and specificities of IPBES rules and procedures highlights the building of a trade-off between a variety of actors with different interests and practices, and who share different ideas on the production of useful knowledge for decision making. In chapter 2, Philippe Le Prestre and Daniel Compagnon analyze the
building process of the biodiversity regime complex and its different elements. Then they analyze the IPBES mechanisms and coordination challenges and show how the coordination challenge entails specific horizontal (between the different conventions and international MEAs) and vertical actions with more or less integrated national biodiversity policies. The highly politicized character of international biodiversity politics and
policies is dependent on the growing diversity of interest among actors around biodiversity issues such as benefit sharing, etc. This has led to many predictions that the attempt to establish a science-policy interface will fail. Why then did the formal establishment of IPBES ultimately succeed? In chapter 3, Alice Vadrot combines both empirical work and theoretical reflection on policy change as a historical development to address this first question. In addition, in the IPBES process, it is becoming increasingly evident that the (monetary) value of biodiversity and ecosystem services could contribute to enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of related policies and politics. Chapter 4 describes the governance and status of IPBES. Drawn up as a
synthetic presentation of the rules governing IPBES, the aim of this chapter is to provide a broad overview of the IPBES governance dynamics with regard to two aspects – institutional functioning and its core business, namely the production of assessments on biodiversity issues. The authors, Denis Pesche, Guillaume Futhazar and Sandrine Maljean Dubois, also highlight some controversial aspects among participants during the emergence process, including the question of the legal status of IPBES and the inclusion of non-state actors in the intergovernmental process, etc. The chapter also describes IPBES activities through its work programme and gives some elements on its budgetary dimension that tell us about the real priorities of the Platform. Then chapter 5 provides relevant elements on IPBES global environmental
governance strategies, showing how one of the keys to the recognition of IPBES is that it must be based on IPCC procedures to ensure the credibility of the assessments it wishes to produce. In this way, Guillaume Futhazar illustrates the obvious influence IPCC has had on the establishment of IPBES rules of procedure for functional reasons and then highlights the procedural innovations of the Platform and attempts to explain them in the light of the characteristics of the Platform.
