ICTA-UAB Researcher Victoria Reyes-García to Speak on the IPBES Biodiversity Report in Madrid
Reyes-García is one of the experts who worked on the document presented to the UN in Paris
ICREA researcher at the ICTA-UAB Victoria Reyes-García will be presenting the main results of the "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity" drafted by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), in an event organised by the Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition taking place on 19 June in Madrid. Victoria Reyes-García is one of the four scientists from Spain who participated in the drafting of this report, which alerts on how the biodiversity crisis, with a million species in danger of extinction, can endanger the human species in a matter of decades.
The event will be presided by Teresa Ribera, Minister for the Ecological Transition, and will take place at the headquarters of the Abertis Foundation in Madrid. The objective is to present and discuss the latest results of the report drafted by this independent organism and commissioned by the UN, as well as to debate the actions which could be put into practice to protect nature and guarantee the health and further development of humanity.
The report, presented in May at the UN headquarters in Paris, represents the most complete scientific assessment of the state of biodiversity ever to be produced. A total of 145 experts and 310 collaborators from 50 countries worked on the report. It is based on 15,000 scientific documents, as well as other sources of knowledge such as local and indigenous wisdom. The document includes the assessment of changes occurring in the past five decades and provides a full panorama of the relationship between economic development paths and their impact on nature. It also displays a range of possible scenarios for the following decades.
The report shows that the speed at which ecosystems are deteriorating has no precedents in the history of humanity and the extinction of species advances at an accelerated pace as a result of non-regulated human activities; however, it also points out the tendencies which can be halted. For this there is a need for a "transforming change" in each of the aspects in which human interact with nature.
The Ministry for the Ecological Transition has invited Victoria Reyes-García to participate in the debate "Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: main contents and solutions". Also participating in the debate will be Unai Pascual from the Basque Climate Change Centre (BC3) and one of the authors of the report, as well as Fernando Santos from the King Juan Carlos University.