Last week several members of the extended GLOBIO team, from PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Radboud University and Leiden University, have participated in the World Biodiversity Forum (WBF), in Davos.
After the pandemic’s lockdowns and restrictions, for many of us this was the first conference in a post-Covid world. It was great to experience live talks and in-person discussions again and being able to strengthen and expand our networks. This year’s WBF, under the theme “Inspiration for Action”, brought together different disciplines and perspectives to discuss biodiversity conservation. During the WBF, the first draft of a resolution to be presented at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Convention of Biological Diversity was co-produced with inputs from the conference participants. From our team, Alexandra Marques, submitted a point on biodiversity footprints, that made it to the final version of the resolution.
Read about our team’s participation and opinions below:
Aafke Schipper
“The WBF was a wonderful opportunity to (re)connect with colleagues both within and outside the GLOBIO team. We shared our recent work via various talks and posters, got introduced to recent developments in the field, and initiated and strengthened ties with members of the international biodiversity research community. A great and inspiring week!”
Alexandra Marques
“I really enjoyed the WBF, I had missed the live talks and discussions and the energy that I get from discussing science with colleagues from my field. Also, for the GLOBIO team, this was a great opportunity to do some team-building and share ideas for the future of our model.
At WBF, I had the pleasure to co-chair a session with Alessandra La Notte from European’s Commission Joint Research Centre on “Ecosystem Services in Sustainable Finance”. Later in the week, I gave a talk entitled “Biodiversity Loss Embedded in Consumption: A Global Footprint Analysis”, in a session co-chaired by Aafke Schipper and David Leclere (from IIASA).”
Hadassa Moreira
“This was the first international scientific congress I attended and it was a fantastic experience! It was very special for me to present a poster of my research and to discuss it with a number of other researchers who took an interest in my work. Additionally, it was inspiring to meet a large number of people working in the field of biodiversity, including some researchers whose work is very important for my own research. Moreover, I was really impressed by the large diversity of topics and approaches discussed at the congress. Finally, it was really nice to meet the GLOBIO team in person!”
Jan Janse
“Very inspiring conference. I liked that the six different viewpoints on biodiversity (Observations, Drivers of change, Multidimensionality, Nature-based solutions, Human wellbeing, and Transformative change) and the links between them were all addressed. We had a nice session on scenarios and models. In this session, I had the opportunity to present the freshwater perspective on modelling solutions. On the monitoring side, terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity still seem a bit separated, but seem to move towards each other on the broader aspects. An interesting session on the Nature Futures Framework showed how people are starting to fill this in by different approaches. I feel the conference may inspire the various strategy discussions at PBL – and also stimulate cooperation in the GLOBIO group. Only one negative point: the many ‘live’ interactions made me take home a Covid infection that I had managed to keep out until now…”
Koen Kuipers
“It was encouraging to see how different scientific fields and perspectives (from field research to machine learning; from monitoring, to attributing and projecting; from micro- to macroscales; and from natural to social sciences) contribute to expand and improve our knowledge and ideas for protecting biodiversity globally. The WBF offered a nice mix of topics directly relevant for potential GLOBIO advancements and topics that broadened my view on the wider field of and developments in conservation research. Besides the content (and maybe more importantly), it has been fantastic to live-interact with old and new faces both during and after the conference hours!”
Valerio Barbarossa
“It was so nice to see so many new research avenues for freshwater biodiversity! Monitoring data is still scarce compared to the terrestrial realm, but many initiatives are trying to fill that gap. eDNA among the others looks like a very promising tool for the future of species distribution mapping. Nevertheless, our freshwater fish modelling work received lots of attention and I am looking forward to possible new international collaborations. Besides that, I enjoyed talking with colleagues from the social science domain on how to make our models “more just”, many interesting challenges ahead for the GLOBIO team!”