Photo: Dr. Kazuhiko Takemoto (UNU-IAS) and Dr. Anne Larigauderie (IPBES)

On 24 July 2017, the United Nations University – Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) entered a Letter of Agreement (LoA) with the Intergovernmental Science - Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).  The LoA highlights the nature of the collaboration in all its terms and conditions.

The first Interagency Liaison Group on Biodiversity and Health (ILG), jointly organized by the Secretariat of Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in Geneva on 4-5 May 2017. The core objective of the meeting was to strengthen the collaboration and policy coherence between key agencies that work at the intersection of human health and biodiversity.

Photo: Courtesy IPBES

The fifth Meeting of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services (IPBES) Task Force on Capacity-building, was held at the Norwegian Environment Agency, in Trondheim, Norway, on 26-28 April 2017. Naoya Tsukamoto and Unnikrishnan Payyappallimana represented UNU-IAS at the meeting. 

External review for the 1st order drafts of the chapters of the IPBES global assessment of biodiversity is now open. Assessment can be done during 15 June - 15 August, 2017. This will be the first global snapshot of the state of the world’s biodiversity in more than a decade, since the release of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

The Global RCE Service Centre has prepared a questionnaire for a preliminary documentation of RCEs' work on biodiversity, ecosystem services, and traditional knowledge (terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems). Please fill in all the activities (research, assessments, capacity development / training / education / awareness programmes, policy advocacy, projects) of all RCE partners.

All RCEs working in these fields are encouraged to fill out the survey. Results of this documentation will be shared with the network!

A total of 159 researchers participated in the 8^th International Conference on Environmental and Rural Development (ICERD) “Approaches to Environmental and Sustainable Development”, hosted by Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) in Thailand on 25-26 February 2017.

CEE Himalaya (Himalaya Initiative of Centre for Environment Education, www.ceeindia.org) with the support from Give2Asia and JSW Foundation, RCE Srinagar, Mountain Partnership, and Indian Himalaya Climate Adaptation Programme conducted various events across the Indian Himalayan Region on 2 February, 2017 on the occasion of World Wetlands Day.

Celebrations in Jammu and Kashmir (Western Himalaya)