BioAgora partners participate in the PESC-RESPIN 2025 meeting

04 Apr 2025 / Events

The Pan-European Stakeholder Consultation (PESC) for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is co-organised by the ECA Network, the RESPIN project, and Biodiversa+. A four-day meeting, referred to as PESC-RESPIN Joint Meeting or PESC8, took place in Brussels from 10 to 14 March 2025.

This event gathered more than a hundred stakeholders, including National Focal Points (NFPs), experts and organisations working at the science-policy interface on biodiversity and climate change in Europe and Central Asia. It provided opportunities for networking and exchanging views on key topics related to engagement with IPBES and the IPCC. The full report of this meeting is available on the RESPIN website. The program, presentations, posters and event report can be found on the PESC-RESPIN page.

At the meeting, BioAgora was represented by two experts from the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) - project coordinator Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki and Samuli Pitzen. They co-organised one of the event’s interactive sessions, which was titled “Raising awareness of IPBES and IPCC findings”. 

The interactive session began with a presentation on the extent to which these two knowledge sources are taken into consideration in the formulation of EU policies. It provided insights into the observations that, while references to IPBES and IPCC outputs are commonplace in policymaking, it often remains unclear how exactly they shape concrete legislative projects. In that sense, ambiguity remains the norm in the Union’s biodiversity policies, diluting the ambitions of member states to scale up conservation and conservation efforts.

Under the facilitation of Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki, the session subsequently sought input from attendees via a group discussion on the basis of two pre-prepared questions:

  • Based on your own experience, are policy-relevant insights from IPBES and IPCC contradictory or complementary with each other?

  • What can be done to improve the knowledge uptake of IPCC/IPBES findings in policymaking?

This resulted in insightful deliberations on the need for streamlining the flow of information from the IPCC and IPBES framework to policymaking circles - institutionalisation and greater resource allocation were brought up as important measures on the road to that goal. 

Additionally, BioAgora itself was presented as part of a broader presentation on EU-funded initiatives addressing the biodiversity science-policy interface. In that sense, the project was introduced in parallel with BioAgora, RESPIN and Biodiversa+ by Nathalie Morata of the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity.