Over the last week the four assessments were presented by the expert teams to representatives of 127 governments and were approved on 23 March at the plenary session of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), in Medellin, Colombia.
Over the last three years Andrew has been leading a team preparing a key part of the assessment for Europe and Central Asia. In Medellin he was a UK representative in the team that presented the assessment that was scrutinised line-by-line by government delegates. Now they are approved by governments the assessments will provide vital information for setting global biodiversity targets for the period after 2020.
The assessment highlight how, despite increases in protected areas across Europe, biodiversity and ecosystems are “still being degraded at alarming rate”.