Blogs

Some progress but still a lot of brackets on the run up to Nagoya for the Access and Benefit Sharing protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity.  A negotiating meeting finished in Montreal earlier this week with a final report that will be further discussed in Nagoya.

High-level meeting on 22 September 2010 on biodiversity at the UN General Assembly in New York.  Interesting background paper focusing on future strategy, including the relation to poverty alleviation.

Vince Cable - Secretary of State at BIS - gave a speech on science today.  Emphasis on innovation, quality, focus and reduced budgets.  Similarities in policy terms with three reports out in March 2010 - the first from Hauser for BIS; a second aimed at the Conservatives from James Dyson; and a third from the BIS Council for Science and Technology.

The Interacademy Council has produced a review of IPCC that will be considered in Busan in October.  Interesting to consider possible implications for the development of the possible Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) - if the General Assembly decide to proceed with this.  Review is available from IAC and the Royal Society website.  /...

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The first couple of recommendations focus on an executive committee and executive director.  Then two recommendations on review mechanisms - again of interest for IPBES.

The next recommendations are of interest for communicating biodiversity science in a risk context for policy audiences:

• All Working Groups should use the
  qualitative level-of-understanding scale in their Summary for Policy Makers and
  Technical Summary, as suggested in IPCC’s uncertainty guidance for the Fourth
  Assessment Report. This scale may be supplemented by a quantitative probability
  scale, if appropriate.
• Quantitative probabilities (as in the
  likelihood scale) should be used to describe the probability of well-defined
  outcomes only when there is sufficient evidence. Authors should indicate the
  basis for assigning a probability to an outcome or event (e.g., based on
  measurement, expert judgment, and/or model runs).

And a final recommendation on communications strategy.