Disruptive Ideas for Biodiversity

While scientific knowledge on drivers and impacts of biodiversity loss is well established, there is a severe implementation gap between what countries have agreed upon internationally and what is actually implemented and enforced at national and local levels. The 2019 global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) finds that species extinction rates have taken on unprecedented levels, and human activities have significantly altered three quarters of the world's land area and two thirds of the marine area.

The years 2020-2021 is an important opportunity for biodiversity governance: countries are expected to agree upon a new global biodiversity framework. To ensure that the new framework will be more successful than its predecessor we need to further define what transformative change – as called for by IPBES – actually means in practice for different sectors and actors in society. To fill the notion of transformative change with life, new perspectives on how to address global biodiversity loss can help reinvigorate this debate and point towards implementation pathways.

In this context, adelphi decided to develop the pilot project "Disruptive Ideas 4 Nature". Its goal was to showcase new approaches which help to further illustrate what transformative change could entail. Highlighting the role of experimentation and learning, we aimed to contribute to an ongoing discussion on rethinking biodiversity governance. To this end, adelphi organised a panel discussion during the 2020 World Biodiversity Forum in Davos on new approaches to biodiversity governance. For more information on the panel session, see the session overview on the WBF's website.