Oral and poster sessions
(Click to access all session descriptions for each thematic track.)
- Oral and poster sessions BEF – Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning
- Oral and poster sessions IND – From measurements to biodiversity indicators and impact metrics
- Oral and poster sessions NEX – Biodiversity nexus – interlinkage of biodiversity with water, food, health, and climate change
- Oral and poster sessions FUT – Futures of biodiversity and approaches to envision, predict, achieve these futures
- Oral and poster sessions FIN – Biodiversity, economic risks and finance
- Oral and poster sessions LEG – Legislation and biodiversity
- Oral and poster sessions GBF – Implementing and achieving GBF goals and targets
- Oral and poster sessions TRA – Transformative change, reconnecting with nature and the role of Indigenous Peoples
- Oral and poster sessions CON – Connecting science, society and practice
1. Oral and poster sessions BEF – Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning
BEF1 Functional diversity in space and time: measurements, models and experiments to advance trait-based ecology
BEF | Session
Conveners: Fabian Schneider
Co-conveners: Maria J. Santos; Jens Kattge; Julie Messier
Biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate due to increasing pressures from human activities and climate change. This urgent situation calls for comprehensive biodiversity observations that can inform policy and action for conservation and restoration, while also advancing our understanding of biodiversity’s role in ecosystem functioning and resilience. Functional diversity, encompassing the diversity of functional traits within and among species, communities and ecosystems, is a key dimension of biodiversity. It links directly to ecosystem processes and services, and can be measured at multiple scales, from individuals to landscapes, incorporating both intra- and interspecific variation. This session invites contributions that explore how and why functional traits and functional diversity are changing across spatial (from local to global) and temporal (from diurnal to decadal) scales. We welcome a wide range of approaches, including in-situ, experimental or modeling studies, and close-range, airborne, or satellite remote sensing, and combinations of these methods. We welcome contributions from various ecosystems and taxa, including, for example, plants and animals in forests, grasslands or marine ecosystems. We particularly encourage contributions that connect functional diversity to ecosystem productivity, stability, or resilience, as well as to other biodiversity dimensions such as taxonomic, phylogenetic, or genetic diversity. This session aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and showcase innovative, integrative research. We welcome participation from researchers across disciplines, institutions, and career stages to contribute to a better understanding of functional diversity and its critical role in sustaining life on Earth.
BEF2 Microbial, functional and biosynthetic diversity in cryo-environments
BEF | Session
Conveners: Jessica Cuartero
Co-conveners: Beat Frey
Habitats from cryo-environments —such as the Arctic, Antarctic, and high-altitude regions—are some of the most fragile, understudied, and climate-sensitive ecosystems on Earth, making them highly vulnerable to climate change. Despite their apparent dormancy, they harbour specialized microbial and viral communities along with unique biogeochemical processes, now increasingly revealed through advances in metagenomics, transcriptomics, and other molecular techniques. This session invites experts in microbiology and biogeochemistry who, drawing on their knowledge of cryo-environments and their complex dynamics, investigate microbial and viral diversity — including microorganisms with unique biotechnological potential—, carbon storage, and nutrient cycling. Their unique and interdisciplinary research aims to understand these ecosystems thoroughly, helping to anticipate their future responses to a warming world.
BEF3 The role of biodiversity in modulating ecosystem functioning under environmental stress
BEF | Session
Conveners: Hans J. De Boeck
Co-conveners: Zhiming Zhang; Pubin Hong; Ivan Nijs
Understanding how biodiversity shapes ecosystem functioning is a central question in ecology, yet many unknowns remain regarding its role in buffering ecosystems against environmental stress. Global changes such as climate warming, extreme weather events, and eutrophication are increasingly threatening the stability and functioning of ecosystems. This session will explore whether, when, and how biodiversity, particularly plant diversity, modulates ecosystem processes and resilience under such stresses.
To deepen our understanding of biodiversity – ecosystem functioning relationships under environmental stress, we invite contributions focusing on various scales and approaches. This includes plot-level experiments revealing mechanistic processes, regional and global datasets uncovering broad patterns, and conceptual and methodological advances. We particularly welcome studies addressing:
• Interactive effects of multiple, co-occurring stressors on biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships
• The mechanisms by which plant diversity influences resistance, recovery, and longer term stability of ecosystem functioning under stress, including elucidating thresholds and nonlinear responses
• Scale dependence in space and time of biodiversity–stability relationships
• Syntheses and comparisons revealing generalities or context dependencies
By integrating insights across scales and stressor types, this session will evaluate the robustness of biodiversity’s contribution to ecosystem resilience, giving a synthesis of current understanding and identifying key knowledge gaps to guide future research. The discussions in the session will also be relevant for biodiversity management and for improving predictions of biodiversity loss impacts under ongoing global changes.
BEF4 Understanding the consequences of tree diversity for ecosystem resilience and climate mitigation using tree diversity experiments
BEF | Session
Conveners: Jeannine Cavender-Bares
Co-conveners: Maria Park; Bernhard Schmid; Xiaojuan Liu
The targets of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) explicitly call for preservation and restoration of forest biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. Guidance on how tree diversity should be managed to restore ecosystems and mitigate climate change is urgently needed. The rapid increase in the establishment and analysis of forest biodiversity experiments over the past two decades provides a basis for insights on how to manage global forests to achieve the CBD targets. This session aims to advance the understanding of consequences of tree diversity for ecosystem resilience and climate mitigation using these experiments. We encourage contributions on deciphering resilience mechanisms as well as promoting biodiversity-positive climate solutions. Contributions could consider different aspects of biodiversity effects regarding climate mitigation (e.g., carbon storage, temperature buffering) and adaptation (e.g., stability, resistance, resilience), approaches to measure these (e.g., remote sensing, genetic approaches to detecting adaptation), and discussion of potential mechanisms. We also welcome submissions on how to design experiments for the future to co-benefit climate mitigation actions and biodiversity conservation from researchers across continents, climate zones and different research backgrounds.
BEF7 From Decline to Recovery: Understanding, Mitigating, and Reversing Insect Biodiversity Loss
BEF | Session
Conveners: Anne Kempel
Co-conveners: Eric Allan, Christoph Scherber
„Insects are essential to terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, yet evidence from around the world points to widespread declines in their abundance, diversity, and biomass. These losses threaten ecosystem services such as pollination and pest control, with cascading effects on other species and human well-being. However, major gaps remain in understanding the magnitude, pace, and patterns of declines, the relative importance of drivers, and the evidence for insects’ critical roles in ecosystem functioning and services. At the same time, strategies for recovering insect populations—particularly in agricultural and human-dominated landscapes—are still not fully synthesized.
This session will bring together researchers, conservationists, and policymakers to present the latest findings on insect population trends across biomes and taxa. We welcome advances in long-term monitoring, meta-analyses, and novel data sources that close geographical and taxonomic gaps, and studies examining drivers of decline, such as land-use or climate change. We also invite research quantifying insects’ ecological and societal importance, showing how their diversity and abundance underpin ecosystem functioning, resilience, and service delivery.
In addition to diagnosing decline, this session emphasizes solutions. We welcome contributions presenting evidence for insect conservation and restoration, evaluating what works, where, and at what scale. We also welcome studies on the enabling conditions for success, such as policy interventions or governance approaches. By integrating knowledge on drivers, impacts, and solutions, this session aims to chart a path to halt and reverse insect biodiversity loss, securing resilient ecosystems and their benefits for future generations.
BEF11 Biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Arctic coasts and seas: Towards a new normal?
BEF | Session
Conveners: Kai Bischof
Co-conveners: Marja Koski; Sarina Niedzwiedz; Paige Eikeland
The retreat of the Arctic cryosphere sets off ecological cascades affecting, amongst others, ecosystem structure and function, phenology, as well as carbon sequestration. Novel ecosystems are emerging in Arctic regions along the land-coast-sea continuum as consequence of unprecedented changes in temperature and connected physical drivers (e.g. wave exposure, light penetration, nutrient supply, stratification, oxygen content). A poleward migration has been observed for organisms ranging from plankton to seaweed, fish and marine mammals, initiating a re-organisation of trophic networks. Arctic coastal and open ocean ecosystems exhibit strong signs of borealisation, transforming them to resemble biological communities from cold-temperate, North Atlantic regions. Phenology shifts in Arctic pelagic systems, i.e. the timing of developmental cycles, blooming events, over-wintering and grazing interactions are also documented. The implications of these upheavals on ecosystem goods and services such as fish harvest, tourism, or carbon dioxide uptake, and the societal consequences at the local, regional, or global level remain elusive. We invite contributions that profile how physical and ecological factors are leading to the emergence of novel Arctic coastal and open ocean ecosystems. We aim to highlight mechanisms and downstream effects, such as trade-offs and consequences to ecosystem services, like fisheries and carbon sequestration. We would like to stimulate the discussion on interdependencies and feedback loops along the ocean-biodiversity-climate-people nexus. The session is organized by the HorizonEurope project SEA-Quester (Grant Agreement No. 101 136 480), focusing on the causes and consequences of emerging polar ecosystems and their potential for carbon sequestration.
2. Oral and poster sessions IND – From measurements to biodiversity indicators and impact metrics
IND1 A Collaborative Session for Biodiversity Insights from Space: Linking Earth Observations and Biodiversity Science
IND | Session
Conveners: Roshanak Darvishzadeh
Co-conveners: Marc Paganini; Jeannine Cavender-Bares; Maria J. Santos
Earth observation (EO) is transforming biodiversity monitoring and understanding, yet the challenges in meaningful and timely integration of EO data with in situ biological and ecological measurements are non-trivial. This session is open to anyone interested in contributing to the forthcoming book «Biodiversity Insights from Space»;.
We will discuss the utilisation of EO data for biodiversity monitoring in different biomes, using a multitude of metrics and indicators relevant for different reporting and understanding of biodiversity status. Proposed contributions can be from case studies exploring how EO could be used for biodiversity management, understanding ecological processes, and detecting responses and resilience in biodiversity. Speakers will share insights into calibrating EO data with in situ data, handling data to achieve standard quality requirements, uncertainty estimates and propagation, and working across different spatial and temporal scales. The session will also address how EO-derived indicators can support national reporting for the Kunming‑Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework and guide biodiversity management.
The session will be interactive. Following short oral presentations, an open forum will identify unresolved methodological challenges, such as detecting stress responses of different magnitudes or capturing below‑ground processes. By bringing together contributions from remote sensing, ecology, conservation and policy, the session will build a diverse team to ensure that the book provides comprehensive information on using EO data to monitor biodiversity change, address conservation targets, and inform management decisions. We will ensure and encourage diversity in geography, career stage, and discipline.
IND2 Advancing farmland biodiversity monitoring: From indicators to action
IND | Session
Conveners: Anna Cord
Co-conveners: Michael Beckmann
With the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the EU Nature Restoration Regulation setting ambitious targets for agricultural landscapes too, robust and scalable monitoring of farmland biodiversity is more important than ever. Comprising cropland and grassland, agriculture covers 37% of the Earth’s surface and 39% of Europe, making it a key driver of biodiversity loss as well as a habitat for many species. Effective monitoring systems are essential for guiding sustainable agricultural management, informing policy and linking agricultural practices to measurable ecological outcomes.
This session will explore practical and innovative indicators and metrics for farmland biodiversity, with a focus on novel technologies that improve monitoring and standardise data collection. Contributions may include traditional field-based methods, as well as cutting-edge technologies such as satellite or airborne remote sensing, passive acoustic monitoring, environmental DNA (eDNA) and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted species identification. These technologies can provide rapid, cost-effective and scalable biodiversity assessments. We particularly welcome contributions that link these indicators to agri-environmental policy instruments such as result-based payment schemes, to global biodiversity targets or to sustainability certifications.
By showcasing scalable monitoring strategies and highlighting how data can be translated into actionable guidance, this session aims to bridge science, policy, and practice. We encourage contributions that connect farmers, nature conservation organisations, researchers, and policymakers, and that identify pathways to integrate farmland biodiversity monitoring into broader biodiversity observing systems.
IND3 Forging links between biodiversity (Goal A) and ecosystem services (Goal B) for the GBF
IND | Session
Conveners: Sarah Weiskopf
Co-conveners: Maria Isabel Arce-Plata; Colleen Miller
The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a global agreement to protect and restore the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystem services, outlines four long-term goals to be achieved by 2050. Goal A is centered on protection and restoration of natural ecosystems, whereas Goal B emphasizes the sustainable use of nature and ecosystem services management. Despite known relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem function, and ecosystem services, it is difficult to account for these connections at large spatial and temporal scales. It is therefore challenging to develop indicators to monitor changes in ecosystem functions and services from data sources currently available, although there have been recent advances. This session will forge stronger links between Goals A and B of the GBF, which require appropriate indicators for harmonized modeling and policy responses. These links should explicitly address dependencies between retention of biological diversity (Goal A) and ecosystem services (Goal B). In addition to monitoring, projections of human and ecological futures that account for relationships between biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services could help inform decisions aimed at achieving the 2050 GBF goals. Presentations in this section could address recent advances towards modeling of these linkages either spatially or temporally. For example: What approaches can be used to develop linked indicators between goals A and B, based on historical relationships, or documenting current trends and future projections towards achieving the 2050 vision of «living in harmony with nature»;? How can we monitor ecosystem service changes in a consistent way across the globe, especially when many service benefits are localized?
IND4 Harnessing Animal Movement for Biodiversity Monitoring: From Movement Trait Data to Biodiversity Indicators and Decision-Making
IND | Session
Conveners: Thomas Mueller
Co-conveners: Lacey Hughey; Anne Hertel; Larissa Beumer; Talia Speaker
Animal movement data often provides dynamic, high-resolution insights into ecosystem processes and conservation needs. These data are particularly valuable for capturing near real-time, spatially explicit processes, individual-scale mechanisms, and transnational ecological phenomena that are often missing from traditional biodiversity monitoring frameworks. Yet despite their potential, movement data remain underutilized in reporting workflows for multilateral environmental agreements. This session will explore the growing potential for animal movement ecology to inform biodiversity monitoring and decision-making across scales. We will examine the benefits of incorporating movement-based metrics into indicator frameworks and highlight ongoing efforts to develop and operationalize suitable animal movement traits for biodiversity monitoring. Topics may include trait-based approaches, integration with global data repositories, applications to connectivity metrics, and case studies demonstrating applications at national or international scales. Through a series of presentations and facilitated group discussions, we aim to surface innovative approaches, identify key challenges, and build momentum toward a more coordinated and impactful use of animal movement data in biodiversity monitoring. We welcome contributions that bridge science and policy, demonstrate scalable methodologies, or offer insights into how movement data can inform conservation action and reporting at national and international levels.
IND5 Leveraging the opportunities in citizen science for scalable biodiversity indicators
IND | Session
Conveners: Diana Bowler
Co-conveners: Caitlin Mandeville
Citizen science (CS) plays a core role in biodiversity monitoring, especially species-level monitoring. Besides data, CS engages society in conservation and creates pathways for transformative change. CS is, however, diverse. Some forms of CS have strict protocols; others are more flexible; while others are co-designed. These different types of CS are often associated with trade-offs for spatio-temporal data coverage and quality, as well as the breadth of engagement across society. Novel developments in CS practice, such as adaptive sampling, may help optimize such trade-offs by coordinating efforts. At the same time, technological innovations are rapidly expanding the range of topics that can be addressed with CS.
The opportunities of CS to fulfill the monitoring needs of the GBF are slowly being recognised. However, the role of CS in monitoring still varies across scales, countries and monitoring targets. The impact of CS is most diverse at the local scale, but successful integration of data into national and international scale analyses is still largely restricted to taxa such as birds and butterflies, especially in western countries. Successful case studies and tested workflows could offer templates for how CS could be applied elsewhere.
Here, we offer an interdisciplinary session about research and practice on CS as a tool for local and national biodiversity indicators. Relevant topics could include:
– Pipelines to translate CS data into indicators
– Examples of co-design or novel forms of engagement
– Approaches for including new tools and technologies
– Challenges and opportunities within different forms of CS
– Adaptive sampling or similar novel approaches for integrated monitoring
– Evidence on social outcomes from CS
IND6 Measuring Poaching and Its Potential Impacts on Biodiversity and Human Health
IND | Session
Conveners: Márcio Oliveira
Co-conveners: Fernando Passos; Estevam Lux Hoppee
Poaching remains one of the most pervasive and elusive drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide, yet its impacts extend beyond ecological disruption, influencing ecosystem functioning and posing risks to human health. Many endangered species have reached this status largely due to poaching and wildlife trafficking. This session will address the challenges of measuring poaching intensity and developing indicators that capture its direct and indirect effects on biodiversity and zoonotic disease dynamics. Integrative approaches combining in situ data, socioeconomic contexts and drivers, remote sensing, community-based monitoring, and forensic tools to quantify hunting pressure and its consequences will be welcomed, alongside discussions on methodological advances, data governance, and the development of standardized biodiversity and health metrics. The session aims to contribute towards the design of global biodiversity observation systems and indicator frameworks that support evidence-based conservation strategies and policy interventions at multiple scales.
IND7 Quantifying Biodiversity Impacts of Global Production, Trade and Consumption
IND | Session
Conveners: Francesca Verones
Co-conveners: Laura Scherer; Alexandra Marques; Stephan Pfister
Biodiversity is being lost at a fast rate, with global production, consumption and trade patterns as important drivers of biodiversity loss. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework has recognized this, with Target 15 calling for disclosure by companies of their biodiversity impacts and Target 16 ensuring that people can make sustainable consumption choices.
For this it is imperative to have tools in place that allow quantifying biodiversity impacts along value chains in a consistent way. In this session, we aim to have presentations about novel and promising approaches for how to assess biodiversity impacts along entire value chains on a global level. We encourage submissions across the terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms and we aim to have a breadth of possible biodiversity metrics and indicators included, such as indicators related to changes in species richness, functional diversity or ecosystem services.
We also call on contributions from a different range of stakeholders, from businesses to policy makers and the scientific community.
IND8 Chemical pollution impacts on biodiversity: Mechanisms and indicators to inform sustainability reporting and guide mitigation strategies
IND | Session
Conveners: Ksenia Groh
Co-conveners: Henner Hollert
Chemical pollution, as one of the five key drivers of global biodiversity loss, is directly addressed in both the Kunming-Montreal Framework (Target 7) and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). However, integration of chemical considerations into biodiversity research and policy has been slow due to difficulties in predicting biodiversity impacts based on laboratory testing and exposure data, and a lack of standardized indicators and metrics suitable for different applications linking chemical pollution and biodiversity in the field. To address these challenges, we need to (i) develop efficient approaches for disentangling the individual contributions of chemicals and other drivers and (ii) establish relevant indicators and metrics of chemical pollution and biodiversity that should be both comprehensive and practicable to enable broad use by scientists, companies, and policymakers in monitoring and environmental assessments for biodiversity protection. We invite contributions from both fundamental and applied research that enhance our understanding of chemical impacts on biodiversity to guide efficient mitigation strategies. This includes, e.g., studies that investigate spatial or temporal links between pollution and biodiversity; advance mechanistic insights or model chemical impacts on biodiversity; translate ecotoxicological data into field-relevant biodiversity assessments; explore the interplay of chemical pollution with other global change drivers; and propose methodologies for assessing cumulative impacts. We seek to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers, economists, and policymakers, aiming to generate actionable insights for managing chemical pollution within a broader sustainability and biodiversity conservation framework.
IND9 Closing knowledge gaps in fungal biodiversity and its conservation
IND | Session
Conveners: Andreas Bruder
Co-conveners: Cátia Canteiro; Jacob Heilmann-Clausen; Elisandro Ricardo Drechsler-Santos; Elisabet Ottosson
Fungi play crucial roles in ecosystems as decomposers of dead organic matter and through biotic interactions as parasites, pathogens, symbionts, etc. Thereby, they directly or indirectly influence the biodiversity of other groups of organisms. Despite their importance, major gaps remain in our understanding of fungal biodiversity and conservation. Partly as a consequence of these knowledge gaps, fungi have been underrepresented in biodiversity monitoring programs, conservation planning, and policy frameworks. Recent large-scale initiatives have confirmed the ubiquity and ecological significance of fungi and taken the first steps towards their systematic monitoring and conservation. Pioneering efforts — e.g. the integration of fungi into national Red Lists and biodiversity action plans in South America and Europe and the creation of KBAs based on fungi in Central Africa — demonstrate that progress is possible when science, policy, and conservation action align. In this session, we will discuss how to overcome knowledge and policy gaps related to fungal biodiversity and conservation, and how we can upscale and harmonize monitoring and conservation of all groups of fungi across different ecosystems and geographies. We also want to discuss how a fungal dimension to monitoring and conservation could benefit conservation overall, and explore how already established programs can be adapted to cover fungi. We also invite contributions and discussions on how novel technologies and approaches can be applied, and how we can ensure that this endeavour includes all elements of the global society. Contributions to the session can provide individual case studies or conceptual ideas, but they should contribute to improving biodiversity monitoring and conservation of fungi.
IND10 Remote Sensing Horizons in Biodiversity Science and Monitoring
IND | Session
Conveners: Sandra Luque
Co-conveners: António Ferraz; Ewa Czyz; Isabelle Helfenstein; Woody Turner
Remote sensing technologies are rapidly evolving, offering transformative opportunities for biodiversity science at scales from local to global. Advances in airborne and spaceborne sensors enable us to capture Earth surface and vegetation properties at unprecedented spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions. Coupled with in situ data, species models, and artificial intelligence, these innovations open pathways to monitor biodiversity across structure, function and composition with great consistency and coverage.
Substantial progress is expected in the coming decade as next-generation Earth Observation missions, multi-sensor integration, and algorithm development converge. These advances promise more precise measurements of essential biodiversity variables such as ecosystem extent, structure and condition. Yet key challenges remain in translating electromagnetic signals into biologically meaningful metrics, scaling from field plots to global extents, integrating multi-source datasets while accounting for uncertainty, and aligning products with ecological theory, conservation practice, and global policy frameworks.
This session invites contributions that showcase how novel remote sensing and AI methods support biodiversity research and conservation. We particularly encourage studies that link remote sensing with in situ data, develop scalable approaches, advance ecological modelling to predict biodiversity change and its drivers, and demonstrate monitoring frameworks combining remote sensing, in situ networks and novel methods. By uniting advances in sensing technology and biodiversity science, the session will highlight how remote sensing can help contribute to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the SDGs, and other international targets.
IND11 Spatial models for biodiversity: Exploring state-of-the-art applications
IND | Session
Conveners: Jakob Nyström
Co-conveners: Devis Tuia
Addressing the biodiversity crisis requires spatial data products to measure current state, assess trends, and evaluate scenarios for decision-making. Use cases range from global monitoring and national reporting to conservation prioritization and corporate disclosures. Today, massive volumes of heterogeneous data (eDNA, bioacoustics, citizen science, remote sensing, text and ecological networks) call for models that can leverage high-dimensional data to learn relationships between biodiversity, the environment and anthropogenic pressures, to create meaningful biodiversity indicators and impact metrics.
In this session, we deep dive into the state-of-the-art of spatial biodiversity modeling on local to global scales, ranging from populations through communities to ecosystems. This includes a multitude of models that integrate in-situ biodiversity data with remote sensing, such as species distribution models, macroecological models, natural value segmentation, causal inference methods, and beyond. It covers a broad spectrum of data-driven modeling techniques, from time-tested statistical models to modern deep learning frameworks that can facilitate learning across species and environments.
We will examine how such models can fuse multi-source inputs into ready-to-use metrics, such as species richness, community turnover, and functional diversity. Discussions will cover best practices for evaluation and uncertainty quantification, strategies to address gaps in biodiversity data, and the roles of data management, benchmarking and explainable AI in building transparent, trustworthy models.
Combining scientific talks, panel discussions and audience engagement, the session aims to identify current limitations of and outline key priorities for improving the state-of-the-art in this field.
Co-Conveners: Tobias Andermann, Jan Borgelt, C. Vanalli, Sara Si-Moussi, Pierre Bonnet, Florian Hartwig
IND12 Using environmental DNA to advance global biodiversity targets
IND | Session
Conveners: Heng Zhang
Co-conveners: François Keck; Florian Leese; Xiaowei Zhang; Florian Altermatt
Achieving global biodiversity conservation targets requires massive spatial and temporal in-situ biodiversity data, which is still limited by the high cost and heavy workload of traditional sampling. In the past decade, environmental DNA (eDNA) has been widely used and become a standard method for aquatic biodiversity sampling. With high efficiency in data collection and processing, eDNA technology will be particularly helpful for biodiversity sampling in understudied areas, with the potential to promote the implementation of findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) sampling strategies. By compiling global eDNA databases following consistent protocols, scientists can analyze how the distribution of aquatic biodiversity at various levels (taxonomic, functional, genetic diversity) are attributable to drainage characteristics, climate and human impacts, and assess the spatial scale and magnitude of the land-water linkage of biodiversity across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, by combining with existing traditional biodiversity databases, the use of eDNA is expected to make an important contribution to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
In this session, we will bring together scientists and engineers that work on or are interested in eDNA technology and its potential applications in regional to global biodiversity sampling. We will explore how to leverage the growing wealth of eDNA database resources to advance biodiversity research on a broader scale and provide reference information for effective decision-making.
IND15 Visions for Soil Biodiversity and Health Indicators (ViSH)
IND | Session
Conveners: Nico Eisenhauer
Co-conveners: Anton Potapov; Julia Koninger
Soil health is foundational to sustaining biodiversity, ensuring food, and water security, mitigating climate change, and supporting human well-being. Yet, despite the centrality of soil to multiple ecosystem services, comprehensive, policy-relevant indicators of soil health are basically missing or remain fragmented across regions and disciplines. This session, „Visions for Soil Health Indicators,“ brings together diverse perspectives from national and international soil monitoring initiatives to explore emerging frameworks for assessing and communicating soil health. Our aim is to catalyze a robust, interdisciplinary dialogue that connects cutting-edge scientific research with actionable decision-making.
Global efforts such as the European Union’s LUCAS Soil Survey, the Global Soil Partnership (FAO), Soil BON, the U.S. National Soil Monitoring Network, and regional observatories in Africa, Latin America, and Asia offer valuable insights into the development and implementation of soil health indicators. This session will convene speakers from a range of disciplines—including soil ecology, agronomy, environmental policy, and socioeconomics—as well as representatives from governmental agencies, international organizations, land-user groups, and Indigenous communities. Contributions will explore indicator design, data harmonization, scalability, and integration into global and national environmental assessments. Special attention will be given to how soil health metrics can support decision-making for safeguarding soil biodiversity and the ecosystem services it underpins. We welcome abstracts that address methodological innovations, stakeholder engagement processes, and case studies that demonstrate how soil monitoring translates into meaningful environmental governance.
3. Oral and poster sessions NEX – Biodiversity nexus – interlinkage of biodiversity with water, food, health, and climate change
NEX1 Breeding for Biodiversity and Resilience: Nature-Based Solutions for Climate-Smart, Nutritious Crops
NEX | Session
Conveners: Raheela Rehman
Co-conveners: Zaheer Ahmed
This session explores biodiversity driven crop breeding combined with nature based and agroecological solutions to develop climate smart, nutritious food systems that support ecosystem health and human well being. Facing challenges like climate change, soil degradation, water scarcity, and nutrient deficiencies, agriculture requires innovations beyond yield focused methods to enhance biodiversity and sustainability. Focusing on cereals and pulses such as wheat and soybean, the session highlights breeding strategies that optimize root nodulation and beneficial plant microbe partnerships to reduce synthetic fertilizer use, lower emissions, and protect water quality, cutting costs for farmers. Breeding for improved soil microbiome compatibility boosts nutrient efficiency and stress tolerance. Advanced techniques like marker-assisted and genomic selection accelerate development of resilient, nutrient efficient varieties.
Examples will show how integrating climate resilience with biodiversity friendly practices supports soil health, pollinators, and ecosystem stability. Nutritional gains through biofortification and improved protein quality will be discussed. The session also covers benefits for farmers and local industries: reduced inputs, stable yields, improved livelihoods, and access to sustainable, high quality crops that open new markets. Participatory breeding and seed sovereignty empower communities. Policy options include funding incentives, biodiversity inclusive certification, multi-stakeholder governance, and payment for ecosystem services schemes rewarding sustainable farming.By linking biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate, this session fosters dialogue on breeding solutions that strengthen resilience, nutrition, and ecosystem integrity.
NEX2 Harnessing the African Ocean Biodiversity Nexus: Climate, Fisheries. Blue Carbon, and Sustainable Blue Economy
NEX | Session
Conveners: Peter Teye Busumprah
Co-conveners: Edward Bonsu, Jeffery Ayia-Mensah
This session explores the critical interlinkages between African ocean biodiversity, climate resilience, blue carbon ecosystems, and sustainable fisheries. Emphasizing the Blue Carbon and Biodiversity Nexus (NEX), participants will examine how preserving marine biodiversity enhances climate adaptation, supports blue carbon sequestration, and sustains livelihoods through a thriving blue economy. Discussions will focus on the role of healthy marine ecosystems in water quality, food security, and human health, highlighting innovative conservation and management strategies. The session aims to foster integrated approaches that leverage biodiversity for climate mitigation and economic development, promoting policy coherence and community engagement across African nations. By uniting scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders, this platform seeks to advance sustainable ocean governance, protect vital marine ecosystems, and unlock the full potential of Africa’s Ocean resources for climate resilience and socio-economic growth.
NEX4 Linking anthropogenic climate change to shifting biodiversity patterns
NEX | Session
Conveners: Jeremy Cohen
Co-conveners: Frank La Sorte; Diego Ellis-Soto; Shubhi Sharma
Biodiversity patterns are rapidly changing with increasing rates of colonization and extirpation associated with anthropogenic climate change. Some species are undergoing range shifts and altering their phenology to track suitable environmental conditions, while others alter their behavior to avoid unsuitable conditions or rapidly evolve their thermal or hydric tolerances. Meanwhile, many species are experiencing steep population declines as habitat becomes unsuitable whereas others are expanding their distributions as newly suitable habitat is created or as humans assist their dispersal. Researchers are increasingly integrating a growing assortment of participatory science databases with biodiversity records, high-resolution environmental information including remote sensing products, and machine learning or AI to understand these changes. Traditionally, researchers have explored relationships between climate means (via data from weather stations, remote sensing platforms, or modeled projections) and shifting biodiversity patterns under climate change. However, extreme weather events are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity and are now becoming well appreciated for their role in pushing organisms beyond their physiological thermal or hydric tolerances, limiting where they can persist and influencing biodiversity patterns. As microclimate information increasingly becomes available through advanced modeling approaches and the widespread deployment of in situ sensors, researchers can estimate whether species might persist despite local changes in macroclimate. As climate change accelerates, researchers must employ cutting-edge datasets and techniques to generate the clearest picture of current and future biodiversity patterns and improve conservation outcomes.
NEX5 Microbial communities as One Health drivers
NEX | Session
Conveners: Adrian Egli
Co-conveners: Fanny Wegner; Alison Mather; Jan Fehr
Microbial diversity sustains life on Earth, supporting ecological resilience, enabling sustainable agriculture as well as safeguarding human and animal health. Traditionally, microbiology has largely focused on single pathogens, yet it is increasingly clear that microbial communities determine broader ecosystem health, disease susceptibility and environmental resilience. From carbon sequestration in forests to nutrient cycling in oceans and the gut, diverse microbial consortia drive biogeochemical processes, modulate immune development, and buffer ecosystems against shocks. However, human activities, such as pollution and overuse of antibiotics, have disrupted microbial biodiversity in many niches, including soil and host-associated microbiomes.
The One Health paradigm recognizes that the trajectories of environmental, animal and human microbiomes are interconnected and moves the focus from isolated pathogens to the community networks that can either amplify antimicrobial resistance, facilitate spill-over events and pandemics, or conversely promote soil fertility, food security and mental well-being. Integrating microbial ecology into One Health is vital to offer solutions to problems such as extreme weather events, rising rates of chronic diseases and an alarming increase in antibiotic resistance.
This session invites contributions that push beyond single-pathogen narratives to highlight community-level mechanisms underlying health and disease. Our aim is to have an interdisciplinary discussion, and we welcome diverse approaches, including experimental, computational or interventional studies. We invite studies demonstrating practical routes to preserve or restore microbial diversity while improving clinical, veterinary, or environmental health outcomes.
NEX6 Reconciling global efforts on biodiversity and climate change to achieve nutrition for all
NEX | Session
Conveners: Chiara Villani
Co-conveners: Marco Fiorentini
The interconnected challenges of malnutrition, biodiversity loss, and climate change demand systemic approaches that address multiple aspects of the food systems at the same time. This came out strongly during the Rio Convention COPs in 2024, and the UNFSS+4 in 2025, where many were vocal about the need for integrating food systems, diets and nutrition considerations into national plans on biodiversity, climate and land.
This high-level event will explore how science can drive convergence between nutrition, climate and biodiversity national policies and plans, centering equity and uncovering the synergies between, sustainable and healthy diets, agrobiodiversity, and climate adaptation, across the rural-urban spectrum.
Discussions will focus on how to improve food systems’ global governance through inclusive multi-stakeholder platforms, bolder investments in cross-disciplinary research, and increased partnerships between science, private sector and farmers. Countries will share their experiences in connecting the dots between nutrition, climate and biodiversity, and discuss with scientists the trade-off and costs of the transition towards sustainable food systems. The session will also function as a science-policy interface platforms where country representatives and scientists will be able to interact and propose evidence-based actionable policies for aligning global efforts to achieve tangible outcomes.
NEX7 The mining-biodiversity nexus: navigating conflicts in the clean energy transition
NEX | Session
Conveners: Valerio Barbarossa
Co-conveners: Laura Sonter; Aurora Torres
The clean energy transition is fueling unprecedented growth in mining for metals and aggregates. This push to decarbonize drives operations into biodiversity hotspots, creating a direct conflict between climate goals and conservation. Mining impacts biodiversity through diverse pathways that extend far beyond its physical footprint and can persist, or worsen, long after operations cease. With only a small fraction of mines undergoing successful restoration, the cumulative environmental burden from active and legacy mines creates substantial conservation challenges. Yet, mining depends on biodiversity for services like water purification for processing minerals and seed dispersal for ecological restoration.
This session will present evidence of these impacts across multiple scales, bringing together researchers, industry, policymakers, and Indigenous and local knowledge holders to explore transformative mitigation strategies. We will also explore how mining companies can address their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. We invite submissions covering the full mining lifecycle, from impact assessment and large-scale mapping to the development of quantification tools that reduce habitat loss and pollution, and rehabilitation methods to restore or enhance biodiversity. Studies on energy transition materials (metals, aggregates) and the legacy impacts of coal are encouraged.
We aim to foster dialogue on the biodiversity-climate nexus at the heart of the energy transition. By bringing together diverse stakeholders, we will identify pathways that reconcile mineral demand with global biodiversity targets. Ultimately, we will produce key recommendations for science, policy, and practice to ensure mining supports a nature-positive future.
NEX8 Upscaling Nature-Based Solutions in Agriculture through the Lens of Environmental Justice
NEX | Session
Conveners: Katarzyna Negacz
Co-conveners: Ina Lehmann; Nadia Bazihizina; Mario Viorreta Torralba
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are actions that protect, restore, and sustainably manage natural or modified ecosystems to tackle pressing interconnected challenges such as climate change, food security, water availability, and disaster risk reduction. Although NbS can be applied across many sectors, agriculture represents a particularly significant area of intervention. This is because agricultural practices often intersect—and often conflict—with efforts to conserve and protect nature. By embedding NbS in agricultural systems, it becomes possible not only to reduce these tensions but also to unlock co-benefits for productivity, resilience, and ecosystem health.
At the same time, it is crucial to recognize that the landscapes where agricultural expansion and intensification occur, and where ecosystem pressures converge, are frequently the very places where issues of environmental justice remain most acute. Moreover, conventional agriculture puts immense pressure on nature and jeopardizes the health of rural communities, while holding tenure over vast areas of land, and thereby, the ability to unlock some of these tensions and conflicts.
This session therefore seeks to explore the opportunities for scaling up NbS for a more sustainable agriculture through the lens of environmental justice. By doing so, it aims to highlight pathways for inclusive, equitable, and transformative approaches that strengthen both ecological integrity and social well-being.
NEX9 Biodiversity for Climate-Resilient Agriculture: Innovations in Crop Genetic Resources Conservation and Ecosystem-Based Food Systems Transformation
NEX | Session
Conveners: Zaheer Ahmed
Co-conveners: Raheela Rehman; Faheem Baloch; Yerzhebayeva Raushan
Biodiversity is the foundation of resilient food systems, yet modern agriculture often relies on a narrow range of crops and genetic resources, leaving global food security vulnerable to climate extremes, soil degradation, and pest outbreaks. This session will explore how crop genetic diversity from landraces to advanced breeding material can be harnessed to achieve climate-resilient, sustainable, and nutrition-secure agricultural systems.
We invite contributions that examine biodiversity’s role in:
•Developing climate-smart crops using conventional, molecular, and AI-assisted breeding methods.
•Integrating crop biodiversity with ecosystem services, such as nitrogen fixation, carbon sequestration, and pollinator support.
•Applying biodiversity-based approaches to enhance soil health, water-use efficiency, and pest/disease resilience.
•Designing agroecological and regenerative farming systems that strengthen the biodiversity–food–climate nexus.
•Translating research into policy and value-chain innovations that benefit smallholder farmers and biodiversity conservation.
The session will also highlight case studies from underutilized crops—such as soybean innovations in South Asia—that demonstrate how biodiversity-rich agricultural strategies can simultaneously improve livelihoods, reduce import dependency, and contribute to Kunming-Montréal GBF targets.
We welcome interdisciplinary, scalable research connecting genetic, species, and ecosystem-level biodiversity.
Intended Outcome:
To generate a cross-disciplinary synthesis of how biodiversity-based crop innovation can operationalize climate adaptation and sustainable food production, leading to a research–policy–practice roadmap for biodiversity-resilient agriculture.
NEX10 Ecosystem Change and Disease Spillover: Risks and Opportunities for Planetary Health
NEX | Session
Conveners: Luci Kirkpatrick
Co-conveners: Jan Fehr, Lena Robri, Adrian Egli, Nadja Kabisch
Global commitments for ecosystem restoration are gaining regulatory and public recognition, yet we are faced with an urgent question: How do changes in the landscape shape the risk of infectious diseases?
There is growing evidence that landscape degradation is driving increased rates of spillover from animals and vectors into humans, but it is unclear whether restoring ecosystems can protect against these effects. Restoration creates novel ecological interactions, altering the distribution and abundance of hosts, vectors and pathogens. These shifts may amplify risk during community reassembly or may rebuild resilience and disease dilution effects if restoration also restores ecosystem functioning. This challenge is particularly urgent given that restored environments often still experience anthropogenic pressure.
This session will bring together cutting-edge research and practice to assess the relationship between landscape change and disease and examine when and how landscape or ecosystem restoration may be protective, or risky in terms of disease emergence or spread. Contributions spanning empirical fieldwork, laboratory, modelling, remote sensing, social, economic and ecological drivers, community engagement and policy practice are all welcome, as are new technological approaches including AI.
Because the relationship between disease spillover and landscape change, particularly restoration, is an inter- and transdisciplinary problem, this session will convene expertise across ecology, public health, social sciences, restoration practice and policy. Together, we will identify the conditions under which landscape change supports both biodiversity recovery and planetary health, while recognising the economic and regulatory realities that shape ecological futures.
To foster innovation and mutual learning, the session will feature short oral presentation clusters followed by dynamic inter-cluster panel dialogues, where each cluster pitches to and builds on the next. This format is designed to ignite cross-sectoral conversations, challenge assumptions, and co-create actionable insights on one of the most pressing biodiversity–health challenges of our time.
Co-Conveners: Nadja Kabisch, Lena Robra, Adrian Egli
NEX11 Biodiversity and Diets: Strengthening Their Interlinkages to Accelerate the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
NEX | Session
Conveners: Hugo Bourhis
Co-conveners: Chiara Villani; Patrizia Fracassi
As Parties prepare for the Convention on Biological Diversity COP17, renewed attention is needed on how the interlinkages between biodiversity and diets can be leveraged to accelerate the achievement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) targets. Biodiversity is the foundation of food diversity and dietary quality, while food systems, markets, and consumption patterns are major drivers shaping how biodiversity is used and conserved. Yet these reciprocal connections remain only partially reflected in the GBF and its monitoring framework.
This session will explore how integrating dietary and nutrition considerations can strengthen GBF implementation—particularly for targets related to reducing threats to biodiversity and meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing. It will highlight emerging evidence and practical examples showing how biodiversity contributes to diverse and healthy diets, and how shifts in consumption and food environments can, in turn, promote conservation and sustainable use.
By examining existing gaps and opportunities within the GBF, the discussion will identify concrete ways to make food and nutrition dimensions more visible in biodiversity policy and monitoring—helping Parties and practitioners align actions that deliver measurable benefits for both people and nature.
NEX12 Biodiversity recovery through Transdisciplinary environmental systems reengineering
NEX | Session
Conveners: Ndubuisi Idejiora-Kalu
Co-conveners: Margaret Hiro Kimishima
The survivability of the variety of life on earth at all levels, from genes to ecosystems, the diversity within and between species, is all dependent on the constantness of the earth’s biological diversity. The distortions of our biodiversity as a result of our veracious quest for new needs, modernization and accessible energy for supporting these activities have constituted grave consequences to existing life on earth (as well as the survivability of the planet itself).
A case study demonstration of this on how this biodiversity consequence is primarily linked to the distortion (and modification) of the natural state of mosquitoes as pollinators and now hematophages is being investigated as a common denominator of malaria responsible for the death of a million people (mostly children under the age of 5) in sub-Saharan Africa yearly. The tampering of DNA cells by Malaria is also linked as a major cause of B-cell Lymphoma cancers misdiagnosed for HIV, TB and Malaria in malaria-endemic regions. This association of major health challenges with the distortion of our biodiversity is just one in several other cases and realities (linking even geopolitical concerns) of the damage to our lives, society and earth due and consequence of a distorted biological diversity.
There is therefore the urgent need for biodiversity recovery solutions and this must transcend known disciplinary areas and ‘knowings’ and should be open to a Transdisciplinary spectra where various forms of Transdisciplinary systems engineering can be harnessed to build a wider and more effective biodiversity recovery modality for our planet, mitigating as well, associated consequences aggressively and gnawingly linked to water, food, health and climate change.
NEX13 The Biodiversity Nexus: Integrated Approaches to Interconnected Crises
NEX | Session
Conveners: Paula Harrison
Co-conveners: Maria J. Santos; Pamela McElwee; Fabrice Declerk
Biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, public health threats and climate change are deeply interconnected challenges. Addressing them effectively requires a shift from siloed approaches to integrated, systems-based strategies that reflect the complexity of social-ecological interactions. This session explores the “biodiversity nexus”: the web of interdependencies linking biodiversity with water, food, health and climate change — and the pathways toward cross-cutting solutions.
The recent IPBES Nexus Assessment highlights the potential of nexus approaches to deliver co-benefits across systems. Nexus approaches identify synergies, minimize trade-offs, and support more holistic, equitable and sustainable solutions. From Indigenous food systems and green infrastructure to nature-based solutions and integrated governance, diverse strategies are emerging across regions and sectors. However, operationalizing such approaches presents analytical, institutional and governance challenges.
This session invites contributions that advance understanding of nexus interlinkages; assess trade-offs and synergies; evaluate response options; and propose integrated tools that can support systemic transformation. We welcome contributions from the IPBES Nexus Assessment that provide a deep dive into aspects of the report and aligned interdisciplinary research from diverse contexts.
By bridging theory and practice, this session encourages ecologists, systems scientists, public health researchers, climate experts, social scientists and practitioners to share insights and explore how nexus thinking can be turned into action. Outcomes will include identifying key research gaps and showing how integrated science can inform more coherent, just, and sustainable responses to global crises.
NEX16 Pathways Towards Positive Land Use for Climate Change Mitigation and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Ecosystems
NEX | Session
Conveners: Nelly Masayi
Co-conveners: Precious Wapukha
Biodiversity degradation, Climate Change and community livelihoods are triple global challenges that affects humanity with the global south being most affected since majority of them rely on nature for livelihoods. To achieve a sustainable land use futures for tropical ecosystems, there is a need for a participatory, interdisciplinary result-based research to reveal the spatial and temporal linkages between land use change, climate change, biodiversity loss and community livelihoods. Participatory approaches offer a powerful tool to inform decision-making in terms of development of integrated land use approaches that are ecologically friendly, affordable and socially acceptable for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and build community resilience. This session will illustrate the transformative potential of participatory and stakeholder led approaches to climate change mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity conservation. The session will emphasise transdisciplinary approaches, use and application of integrated scientific and indigenous and local knowledge applied across Africa and beyond. The session will combine community participation with scientific knowledge such as Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Data Science to model the past, current and future status of biodiversity and climatic conditions. The sessions will further illustrate how the changes impact ecosystems, species and community livelihoods. The session aims to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion, identify emerging strategies and policy insights, foster researcher-stakeholder dialogue, and highlight the relevance of scenario planning to global biodiversity targets.
4. Oral and poster sessions FUT – Futures of biodiversity and approaches to envision, predict, achieve these futures
FUT1 Advancing Causal Inference in Biodiversity Change Detection
FUT | Session
Conveners: Franziska Schrodt
Co-conveners: Ines Martins; Wilfried Thuiller; Juliano Cabral
Understanding the causes of biodiversity change is central to improving our predictions of and responses to future changes. While causal attribution has progressed in fields such as epidemiology and economics, ecology has remained cautious, often avoiding causal claims or conflating predictive models with causal inference. However, with the rapid growth of and access to spatio-temporal biodiversity data, increased computational capacity, and interdisciplinary collaboration, there is renewed momentum to strengthen causal reasoning in ecological research.
This session will highlight recent advances in advancing causal inference in biodiversity science, including theoretical approaches, integrating underused and novel modelling perspectives, and applied uses of biodiversity change detection and attribution frameworks. We will highlight the key challenges and opportunities in applying causal approaches to biodiversity change analyses, offering an accessible overview of current methods and decision points for ecologists and applied practitioners.
Our session is aimed at fostering dialogue across disciplines, highlighting pathways towards integrating theory with data-driven approaches to advance robust causal inference in biodiversity science. We particularly welcome contributions on integrating causal and process-based models, as well as novel applications of detection-attribution frameworks, as well as studies addressing the interface of ecological causal monitoring, policy, and conservation planning.
FUT2 Advancing Urban Biodiversity Research through Innovative Methods
FUT | Session
Conveners: Kilian Perrelet
Co-conveners: Joan Casanelles Abella; Monika Egerer
Urban areas are among the fastest growing landscapes on Earth. Once seen mainly as drivers of biodiversity loss, cities are now recognized as complex socio-ecological systems that can harbor significant biodiversity and deliver essential ecosystem services to people. Yet, urban biodiversity remains underexplored compared to other ecosystems, with persistent blind spots in how biodiversity is studied, modeled, and valued by society.
Traditional ecological approaches often struggle to capture the unique dynamics of cities: extreme levels of habitat loss and fragmentation, rapidly shifting land use, and the interplay of ecological and social processes. Knowledge gaps remain around how species adapt to urban areas, how biodiversity contributes to human well-being, and how to scale insights from local case studies into broader conservation frameworks. Moreover, taxonomic biases, limited long-term monitoring, and insufficient integration of social and cultural aspects continue to limit our understanding.
This session highlights novel methods, concepts, and models that expand the frontiers of urban biodiversity research. We welcome contributions that may include:
– Innovative tools for studying urban biodiversity (e.g., predictive biodiversity modelling, eDNA, AI-assisted monitoring, remote sensing, citizen science).
– Urban eco-evolutionary processes and their socio-ecological drivers.
– Integration of social and cultural dimensions of biodiversity in cities.
– Case studies that identify overlooked aspects of urban biodiversity.
By addressing blind spots with new approaches, this session aims to advance a more comprehensive understanding of urban biodiversity and promote resilient, biodiverse cities that support human well-being (Global Biodiversity Framework, Target 12).
FUT3 Axioms of dead-ends and new possibilities
FUT | Session
Conveners: Milla Unkila
Co-conveners: Saska Tuomasjukka; Mia Salo; Sari Puustinen
We know what causes biodiversity loss, i.e. the human activities resulting in overuse and exploitation of nature, climate change, pollution and invasion of alien species. What we seem to focus less on are the reasons beneath the causes – why did we start and continue those activities? What choices and assumptions led to the development of the trampling juggernaut of our current economic system, where it is impossible for a middle-class Westerner to go through a normal day without causing environmental damage? What alternatives could there have been – and more importantly, what kinds of axioms could underpin the creation of such economic systems that would enable us to co-exist with other species, or at least function within the planetary boundaries?
This session calls for discussion about the philosophical and historical crossroads where we chose to build our advances on assumptions that have turned out to lead to a dead-end. Through highlighting the role of axiomatic choices in the past, the aim is to assess the underpinnings of our current systems and start envisioning alternative axioms onto which we can ground more sustainable futures.
We call for e.g. post-structuralist articles exploring the roots of our current predicament or envisioning alternative pasts, presents or futures. For example, how would the economy look like if humans had been viewed as something other than Homo Economicus in the 19th century? How would our society look like if instead of utilitarianism, we had chosen virtue ethics? We welcome papers not only outlining the need for transformation but going deeper into reflecting the fundamental building blocks of both our current unsustainable systems and possible sustainable ones.
FUT4 Exploring the risks and opportunities of non-native species for the future of biodiversity
FUT | Session
Conveners: Martin Schlaepfer
Co-conveners: Jens-Christian Svenning; Erick Lundgren
The accelerating impacts of climate change compel conservation biology to rethink traditional approaches, including the rigid dichotomy between native and non-native species. Conservation efforts increasingly require adaptive, forward-looking strategies that acknowledge biotic novelty and prioritize ecosystem function and human well-being.
Non-native species, long viewed primarily as threats, may play vital roles in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services under future climatic regimes. Some are more likely to persist than native species, providing safeguards against extinctions and ensuring continued provisioning of ecosystem functions such as pollination, carbon sequestration, or habitat structure. Novel ecosystems shaped by non-native species may also assist in species survival through processes like hybridization or novel mutualisms.
However, these potential benefits must be carefully weighed against substantial risks. Non-native species can reduce ecosystem resilience, alter trophic dynamics, and contribute to native species decline. The value of nonnative species must be considered alongside common concerns about them such as, the loss of ecological integrity and cultural values.
In this session we seek speakers who advocate for nuanced assessments that incorporate both scientific evidence and diverse societal values. This proposed session will create space for critical discussion of these emerging perspectives, facilitate the sharing of empirical evidence and case studies, and help shape a pragmatic, ethically grounded conservation paradigm. By addressing the dual roles of non-native species as both potential allies and threats, the session will foster more adaptive and inclusive conservation strategies suited to a rapidly changing world.
FUT5 Future of Mangrove Restoration and Conservation in Africa: Blue Carbon, Marine Connectivity, and Community Governance
FUT | Session
Conveners: Nyimale Alawa
Co-conveners: Peter Ekunwe; Simangele Silhole; Cecilia Olima; Margaret Owuor
Africa’s mangrove forest extent is ranked second in the world after Asia, followed by South America. Beyond their terrestrial footprint, mangroves are integral to adjacent marine ecosystems, sustaining fisheries as nursery grounds, stabilizing coastlines through sediment trapping, and functioning in tight ecological linkages with seagrass meadows and coral reefs. These vital ecosystems are under a myriad of threats. Despite their high carbon sequestration potential, mangroves remain largely absent from Africa’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and biodiversity frameworks. This session will critically explore this gap, identifying science–policy mechanisms to position mangroves as a cornerstone of blue carbon and biodiversity commitments. It will also spotlight governance innovations, particularly Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs), which empower communities to manage coastal and marine resources. In response to these challenges, this session – titled ‘’Future of Mangrove Restoration and Conservation in Africa: Blue Carbon, Marine Connectivity, and Community Governance’’ explores the interconnectedness of mangrove conservation with biodiversity protection, climate adaptation, food and nutrition security and sustainable livelihoods.
FUT7 Methodological innovation in the co-creation of biodiversity-centric scenarios: Sharing learning to advance transdisciplinary research practice
FUT | Session
Conveners: Anita Lazurko
Co-conveners: Zuzana Harmackova; Mara de Pater; Aniek Hebinck; Elizabeth Díaz General
Addressing the biodiversity crisis requires transformative change. The sustainability research community is responding with applied transdisciplinary and co-created futures research, which aims to define and/or evaluate desirable visions for and pathways to achieve positive futures for people and nature. This research offers insights to decision makers while facilitating learning across diverse disciplines and worldviews. As a rapidly evolving field, transdisciplinary futures research is an exciting domain of methodological innovation, bringing together systems approaches, participatory methods, creative practice and integrated modelling. This session aims to generate shared learning on the research process – how framing and methodological choices were made and with what impact on outcomes – to accelerate advancement of the field. We will assemble presentations from diverse researchers and practitioners who have experimented with novel transdisciplinary methods to develop and evaluate desirable biodiversity-centric scenarios. Presenters will be asked to spotlight and critically reflect on their methods. We invite contributions from the biodiversity research community who have pursued novel transdisciplinary futures methods. We are interested in case studies that are pushing frontiers in three domains: 1) applying systems approaches to explore trade-offs, synergies and complexities across scenario trajectories, 2) incorporating imaginative or inspirational methods to ‘open up’ consideration of novel scenarios and 3) grappling with the challenges in linking rich participant views on ‘desirable’ futures into broader aims including modelling. Through bridging diverse contexts, we hope to steward future directions that can better inform and enable transformation.
FUT9 Predictive models to transform global ambitions into effective actions
FUT | Session
Conveners: Mark Urban
Co-conveners: Damaris Zurell; Santiago Velazco; Greta Bocedi
Global agreements have set ambitious targets to stem the decline of biodiversity. However, the pathway from agreement to action is still unclear and often neglects forward-looking models to facilitate effective and efficient strategies to reach global and national targets. Reaching desired biodiversity outcomes at national and global scales will require predictive models to assess progress towards targets, guide actions, provide cost-effective solutions, and integrate local and national efforts that scale up to attain cohesive global outcomes.
In this session, we aim to highlight case studies that have applied innovative predictive models to facilitate the transformation of conservation ambitions into effective actions, with an emphasis on examples with demonstrated policy relevance. Examples might include population models that suggest the best mitigation methods to prevent the extinction of endangered species, models supporting corridor placement between protected areas, national to global models that indicate priority regions and species for conservation under varying policy-relevant scenarios, and novel cutting-edge mechanistic models such as supporting adaptive evolution to environmental change.
Overall, our session will demonstrate the value of predictive models in facilitating actions that best support biodiversity protection and facilitate discussions among policymakers, conservation practitioners, scientists, and modelers. The session would be supported by the GEO BON EcoCode collaborative. We foresee the development of a high-profile journal article summarizing and synthesizing case studies and a companion white paper for the UNEP for distribution to GBF parties.
FUT10 Rethinking static spatial planning for biodiversity conservation in a rapidly changing world
FUT | Session
Conveners: Benjamin Black
Co-conveners: Adrienne Grêt-Regamey; Peter Verburg
As climate change and socio-economic transformations accelerate, the global distribution of biodiversity is undergoing rapid and often unpredictable shifts. These changes present a challenge for conventional approaches to planning area-based conservation instruments (e.g. protected areas and spatial zoning) which remain limited to relatively static representations of environmental conditions and often overlook diverse social perspectives on the goals and priorities of conservation.
This session addresses the urgent need to rethink prevailing static spatial planning instruments to make them more responsive, flexible, and forward-looking. We welcome submissions that examine innovative approaches, models, and governance frameworks that can help define area-based conservation strategies that better respond to future climate and socio-economic changes and reflect alternative conceptions of what constitutes desirable conservation outcomes. The goal of this session is to support efforts to make spatial conservation planning more dynamic, equitable, and robust under uncertainty with a view to informing international processes such as the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. In this regard, the contributions of this session will be synthesized into a set of actionable recommendations aimed at guiding planners and decision-makers in aligning biodiversity strategies with a future characterized by climate and socio-economic changes.
FUT11 Shaping Biodiverse Futures: Applying the Nature Futures Framework for Scenario Development from Local to National Levels
FUT | Session
Conveners: Alejandro Ordonez Gloria
Co-conveners: Laura Pereira; Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen; Sakshi Rana; Thomas Schmitt
Envisioning desirable futures for biodiversity requires not only compelling narratives but also rigorous and operational frameworks that can be applied across contexts and scales. This session highlights the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) as a methodological foundation for developing biodiversity-centric scenarios and translating them into actionable strategies for sustainability and governance. Presentations will demonstrate how the NFF has been, or could be, employed to construct scenarios that connect local realities with global drivers, integrate social, ecological, and governance dimensions across scales, and embed plural knowledge systems—including Indigenous and local perspectives—into the scenario development process. A key focus will be on translating these scenarios into practical pathways for policy and decision-making. By concentrating on methodological innovation, the session will illuminate both the analytical strengths and the practical challenges of applying nature-focused perspectives, including the treatment of uncertainty, the integration of diverse disciplinary approaches and knowledge systems, and the challenge of scaling from local case studies to national strategies. Through critical reflection on ongoing applications, the session aims to provide concrete insights into the use of the NFF across scales, clarify its methodological strengths and limitations, foster exchange on integrating plural knowledge systems into scenario work, and identify opportunities for embedding the NFF into governance and policy frameworks. In doing so, it will strengthen collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers while inspiring methodological advances for biodiversity futures research.
FUT12 Social-ecological insights from LTSER platforms: informing resilient and sustainable biodiversity futures
FUT | Session
Conveners: Sophie Peter
Co-conveners: Lisa Lehnen
Addressing biodiversity loss and navigating toward more resilient futures requires knowledge that is not only scientifically robust but also grounded in long-term engagement with people and places. Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) platforms are vital infrastructures for producing such knowledge. They enable a deeper understanding of the dynamic interactions between biodiversity, land use, and societal change. Across diverse regions and contexts, LTSER initiatives integrate ecological monitoring with social science perspectives, working with stakeholders to generate insights that support transformation toward sustainability.
This session invites contributions from researchers and practitioners involved in long-term, integrative biodiversity research, particularly those exploring how such knowledge can inform future-oriented thinking and action. We are interested in approaches that explicitly engage with questions of desired futures, scenario development, or pathways for social-ecological transformation. Of particular interest are cases that highlight how embedded, inter- and transdisciplinary research can help anticipate developments, navigate uncertainty, and support adaptive governance.
Examples from platforms such as the Kili-SES project in Tanzania and the Biodiversity Exploratories in Germany will serve as starting points to discuss how long-term, place-based research can contribute to collective narratives and informed decision-making for biodiversity. We welcome submissions from other LTSER sites and comparable initiatives that combine ecological and societal dimensions to co-create knowledge for sustainable futures.
FUT13 Telling the Future: The Significance of Environmental Narratives
FUT | Session
Conveners: Claudia Keller
Co-conveners: Anna Deplazes Zemp
The human capacity to imagine alternative futures—and thereby enable transformation—is deeply connected to our nature as homo narrans. Narratives and stories play a central role in shaping how we envision desirable futures for both biodiversity and people.
They are also crucial tools in the societal discourse and negotiation processes that decides which futures are realised and how.
In recent years, narratives have increasingly come into focus within biodiversity research (cf. Louder/Wyborn 2020), with various disciplines across the social sciences and humanities approaching the topic from diverse perspectives and with varying conceptual and terminological understandings. This session aims to pursue three interconnected goals:
First, we seek to foster an inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue on how narratives and stories are used in different research disciplines and in biodiversity communication. What roles do they play in shaping public discourse, policy, or conservation practice?
Second, we are particularly interested in the relationship between narrative and ethics: How do environmental narratives reveal the values people attribute to biodiversity? How do they engage with the ‚rough edges‘ of nature—the disvalues or conflicting aspects of biodiversity? And to what extent can narratives help to shape and strengthen the psychological, cultural and moral values associated with biodiversity?
Third, we aim to discuss concrete case studies that showcase environmental narratives which imagine desirable futures for biodiversity—and pathways to reach them.
We invite contributions from scholars across the social sciences and humanities, as well as practitioners engaged in biodiversity communication, who work with or critically reflect on environmental narratives.
FUT14 The Social–Ecological Digital Frontier: Innovations for Biodiversity Futures
FUT | Session
Conveners: Johannes Langemeyer
Co-conveners: Alba Ortiz Naumann; Christopher Raymond
Societies are experiencing an extinction of direct nature experiences, leading to a deepened disconnect from biodiversity. At the same time, more of our shared meaning-making, knowledge formation, and agency creation now happens in digital spaces – nature values not being an exception. While digital media are often portrayed as part of the problem, they also hold untapped potential to foster new forms of reconnection and care for nature.
This session takes Digital Relational Nature Values and Digital Environmental Stewardship as an entry point to explore the broader social–ecological digital interface (Langemeyer & Calcagni, 2022). Drawing on insights from the BIG-5 project (Fostering Internet-based Values of the Environment, www.big-5.eu), we invite external contributions that investigate how digital media shape people’s relationships with nature, and how these can be mobilized to support biodiversity protection. We welcome contributions that share conceptual, methodological, empirical, or practical insights, including (but not limited to):
• Digital mediation of nature experiences and value creation
• Digital-physical conservation and restoration interactions (e.g. value-action gap)
• Innovative approaches at the intersection of social–ecological systems and digital technologies
• Opportunities and risks of digital engagement for representing the needs of humans and other species in biodiversity restoration planning
Intended Outcome
The session discussion aims at an advanced understanding of how to turn digital media influence into tangible biodiversity benefits. By sharing diverse perspectives, the session aims to build a community of researchers and practitioners engaging with the amphibious realm of social–ecological digital realities.
FUT19 Reimagining Cities for Biodiversity-Positive Futures and Human Well-Being
FUT | Session
Conveners: Clara Veerkamp
Co-conveners: Marco Moretti, Olivia Bina, Roy Remme, Aline von Atzingen
As over 190 countries commit to the Global Biodiversity Framework’s call for transformative change, cities emerge as critical arenas for action. Urban areas concentrate people, infrastructure, and governance—making them powerful leverage points to reverse biodiversity loss, mitigate climate change, and enhance quality of life.
This session explores how cities can be reimagined as biodiversity-positive, climate-resilient, and socially inclusive spaces, where nature is not just conserved, but reintegrated into daily urban life. We ask: what does it mean to “live in harmony with nature” in urban contexts and how can this vision be realized?
Achieving this vision requires more than technical fixes: it demands for systemic approaches that address both biophysical and social drivers of change, rethinking cities as entangled systems of built and living elements. We invite contributions that integrate ecological, climatic, and social dimensions of urban transformation, and highlight how diverse values, preferences, and knowledges can guide equitable and adaptive planning. We especially welcome inter- and transdisciplinary work linking biotic and abiotic components (plants, animals, soil, water, climate) and community well-being (human and non-human life).
Key themes include:
– Inclusive governance, relational values, and cross-sector collaboration
– Pathways to biodiversity-positive and multispecies urban futures
– Urban green space design under climate and social pressures
– Intersections of plant traits, community assembly, and microclimate regulation
– Social and ecological drivers of urban vegetation selection and care
– Strategies aligning biodiversity, resilience, and human well-being
5. Oral and poster sessions FIN – Biodiversity, economic risks and finance
FIN1 A close look into the IPBES Business & Biodiversity assessment
FIN | Session
Conveners: Gabriela Rabeschini
Co-conveners: Niak Sian Koh; Tuan Nguyen; Daniel Avila Ortega; Jacob Bedford
The IPBES assessment of the impact and dependence of business on nature aims to strengthen the knowledge base to support efforts by business to achieve the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity–living in harmony with nature–and the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity. In a collaborative effort involving experts from various knowledge systems, scientific disciplines and business sectors, it categorizes the dependencies and impacts of business and financial institutions on nature; assesses methods for measuring such dependencies and impacts; and assesses options for actions by businesses and other societal actors that interact with them. This session welcomes the assessment’s team to give an overview of its content, key messages and knowledge gaps. Abstracts should cover topics from chapters 1-6 and their cross-cutting issues related (but not resumed) to: 1. presenting the assessment’s framework and laying out the context for understanding how businesses interact with nature; 2. how businesses depend on biodiversity–typology of dependencies; synergies and trade-offs; 3. how businesses impact biodiversity–business impact types and pathways; synergies and trade-offs; 4. approaches for measurement, including frameworks, metrics, indicators, models, data, and tools; 5. options for action by businesses to contribute to transformative change and sustainable development by using measures of impact and dependence; 6. options for action by Governments, the financial sector, Indigenous People and local communities and civil society to create an enabling environment for business to achieve the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. The session concludes by identifying opportunities for actors to contribute to bending the curve of biodiversity loss through a whole-of-society approach
FIN2 Aligning biodiversity finance with sovereign debt justice
FIN | Session
Conveners: Sara Löfqvist
Co-conveners: Leland Werden; Jayden Engert
In this session we aim to explore the relationship between biodiversity loss and the high sovereign debt burdens faced by many countries in the Global South, much of which are rooted in colonial-era economic structures. With high debt service costs, many governments are left with shrinking fiscal space to invest in conservation. At the same time, the need to earn foreign currency to service debt (much of it denominated in U.S. dollars) can drive countries to expand in environmentally harmful industries such as mining, industrial agriculture, and fossil fuel production for export.
The growing material risks of nature loss are also affecting sovereign credit ratings, which reduces investor confidence and thereby increases borrowing costs. Despite this, much of climate and biodiversity finance channeled to the Global South continues to be delivered in the form of loans, which risks exacerbating debt crises. In this way, growing sovereign debt burdens and biodiversity loss risks creating a vicious cycle.
In this session we bring a macro-financial lens to the biodiversity finance conversation, exploring how debt and fiscal vulnerability affects the extent to which biodiversity loss in the Global South can be addressed in alignment with wider social justice objectives.
We invite discussion on questions such as:
– How can debt justice considerations be integrated in biodiversity finance commitments?
– How can sovereign debt relief mechanisms be designed to expand fiscal space for conservation without reinforcing new forms of dependency?
– What role can credit rating agencies, development banks, and international financial institutions play in aligning debt sustainability with biodiversity protection?
FIN3 Biodiversity Finance: Integrating Ecological Value into Financial Decision-Making
FIN | Session
Conveners: Lisa Junge
Co-conveners: Leyla Azizi
This session explores biodiversity finance as a critical yet underrepresented lens for embedding ecological considerations into economic and financial systems. Biodiversity loss poses profound physical, transition, and systemic risks to financial markets. As fiduciaries of global capital, financial institutions (FIs) exert a substantial influence on biodiversity outcomes through their investment, lending, insurance, and procurement decisions.
The session will examine the intersection of biodiversity with financial markets, business models, and insurance practices, and what this implies for investment strategies and long-term value creation. It will explore the role of nature credits and similar instruments in shaping biodiversity-positive markets, while critically assessing their credibility and ethical implications. Attention will also be given to policy and governance mechanisms, such as regulation, disclosure, and risk assessment, that support the integration of biodiversity into financial decision-making. A further focus lies on how FIs can operationalise biodiversity-related risks, dependencies, and opportunities, and how new partnerships, frameworks, and innovations may help align capital flows with ecological goals.
By bringing together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, the session aims to bridge disciplinary and sectoral silos, deepen understanding of biodiversity finance, and surface tensions between financial logics and ecological realities.
The objective of this session is to initiate a discussion on the establishment of biodiversity finance as a transformative mechanism for redirecting financial flows towards ecologically viable and ethically sound futures.
FIN4 Biodiversity footprints for companies – metrics, challenges, and opportunities
FIN | Session
Conveners: Friederike Gebert
Co-conveners: Leander Leist; Laura Scherer
With ongoing biodiversity loss, businesses, authorities, and society are expected to account for their biodiversity impact. Under environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, larger companies must disclose their biodiversity footprint. Although the European Sustainability Reporting Standard ESRS E4 took effect in 2024, a standardised approach is still lacking. Guidelines and metrics are being developed by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TFND), the Science Based Target Network (SBTN) or the Nature Positive Initiative (NPI). However, assessment metrics vary highly and none reflects the inherent complexity of biodiversity. For companies, a uniform, numerical footprint index that could be included in financial statements – possibly with a price tag – would be desirable. Such an approach requires standardisation, calibration, suitability across geographic locations, sufficient spatiotemporal resolution and data quality – all of which is not yet given.
Biodiversity footprints offer immense potential for companies to assess their direct and indirect biodiversity impacts, to identify high-risk areas in value chains, and to establish mitigation measures, ultimately resulting in an asset that can be increased or even be traded.
This session presents current developments in corporate biodiversity reporting and invites contributions on:
– biodiversity metrics or assessment tools for companies
– challenges and opportunities in developing and implementing biodiversity footprints
– links to frameworks such as ESG, ESRS E4, TFND, and SBTN
– case studies on corporate biodiversity footprint reporting
We plan to connect scientific knowledge and corporate perspectives, welcoming contributions from both biodiversity researchers and business professionals.
FIN5 Bridging Nature, Humans, and Capital for Biodiversity-Positive Outcomes
FIN | Session
Conveners: Leyla Azizi
Co-conveners: Rajat Panwar; Benjamin Cashore
Objectives: This session explores socio-biodiversity as a lens for integrating environmental, social, and financial considerations in biodiversity management. It will examine links between biological and cultural diversity and economic systems; highlight Indigenous Peoples and local communities as knowledge holders; discuss policies, governance, and finance strategies shaped by socio-biodiversity; and foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, investors, and policymakers to build credible biodiversity markets and ethical approaches to biodiversity finance.
Background: Biodiversity underpins environmental, social, and economic well-being and is increasingly central to business and finance. Effective decisions require moving beyond narrow valuation to integrate ecological, cultural, and social values, recognizing the complexity of socio-ecological systems. Businesses both depend on and impact biodiversity, while facing risks from its decline, making systemic approaches essential. Yet business practice often falls short, emphasizing positive contributions while ignoring negative impacts and wider social consequences. Addressing these gaps demands integration of nature, humans, and capital, and partnerships that support mutual learning and capacity building.
Session Structure:
1. Opening Keynote (10 min)
2. Presentations (45 min)
3. Interactive Discussion (30 min)
4. Closing Remarks (5 min)
Contribution: This session will bridge ecological, social, and financial dimensions, foster inclusive and interdisciplinary partnerships, and identify actionable strategies for businesses and investors to halt biodiversity loss while improving risk management.
FIN6 Capital market actors and biodiversity finance: Status quo and ways forward
FIN | Session
Conveners: Daniel Marcel te Kaat
Co-conveners: Sophie Bornhöft
In light of declining biodiversity and the growing recognition of its ecological, social, and economic importance, there is an urgent need to more effectively integrate biodiversity considerations into financial decision-making. Capital markets play a central role in directing financial flows across the economy. However, the understanding of how capital market actors perceive, manage, and disclose biodiversity-related impacts and dependencies remains limited.
This session explores how different financial actors engage with biodiversity in investment analysis, stewardship practices, and risk and regulatory frameworks. It aims to assess current approaches and identify opportunities for enhancing the role of capital markets in supporting biodiversity restoration and conservation.
We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
– Definitions and perceptions of biodiversity risk among capital market actors
– Pricing of biodiversity-related risks and opportunities in financial markets
– Integration of biodiversity considerations into institutional investment strategies
– Approaches to biodiversity risk management by insurers and banks
– Active ownership and stewardship strategies linked to biodiversity
– Use of biodiversity indices and benchmarks in portfolio construction and evaluation
– Comparison of biodiversity and climate considerations in investor decision-making
– Market-based incentives and disincentives for biodiversity-aligned finance
– Assessment of current incentive structures and their sufficiency in fostering biodiversity-positive investing
– Role of financial policymakers, regulators, and central banks in shaping biodiversity finance
– Market failures and corrective policy instruments
FIN7 Biodiversity Finance and Economics: Metrics, Markets, and Private Capital
FIN | Session
Conveners: Thomas Giroux
Co-conveners: Chiara Colesanti Senni; Fanny Cartellier; Ram Pandit; Franziska Schrodt
Biodiversity loss is posing an existential threat to humanity. Averting the loss to improve biodiversity outcomes is deeply embedded in economic activities, and there is an urgent need to bridge the biodiversity finance gap, estimated at $700 billion annually. This need far exceeds public funding capacity, making private investment essential through different financial instruments (blended finance, nature credits, and debt-for-nature swaps). The physical risks of biodiversity loss become increasingly material (i.e., financial risk) for business and the economy, and pricing this risk is emerging in financial sectors such as insurance sector.
The effectiveness of these tools and instruments depends on robust, comparable, and scalable biodiversity metrics and standardized frameworks that are transparent, credible, and accountable to develop confidence in biodiversity market and financial sector.
Drawing on theoretical and empirical examples from diverse contexts, the session aims to foster cross-sector learning on what works, and what does not in developing biodiversity markets, and generating private finance to bridge the funding gaps.
We welcome contributions that focus on biodiversity finance and economics to address biodiversity measurement, market, and finance related topics in general. The specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
– How biodiversity metrics can be standardized for mainstream investment?
– Lessons from insurance in pricing biodiversity-related risks.
– Designing financial tools/instruments and their effectiveness and scalability to mobilize private finance while reducing corporate impacts.
– Lessons from biodiversity markets – key market determinants (demand- and supply-side factors), and policy innovations
– Integrating indigenous and local knowledge in biodiversity financing and financial products
FIN8 Macrofinancial and systemic risks of biodiversity loss
FIN | Session
Conveners: Lydia Marsden
Co-conveners: Katie Kedward; Josh Ryan-Collins; Carolin Carella
Biodiversity and ecosystem services underpin the world economy, yet their ongoing degradation now threatens the socioeconomic activities that rely on them (‘physical risks’). Nature protection policies, though essential for long-term stability, could temporarily disrupt production and prices, especially if implemented in a disorderly way (‘transition risks’). Progress has been made in mapping business, government, and financial impacts and dependencies on nature, offering a high-level indication of potential exposure to these biodiversity-related economic risks.
Yet, how risk exposures at the firm level can cascade towards systemic macroeconomic and financial (‘macrofinancial’) risks remains poorly understood. Key channels include ecological feedback loops such as tipping points, cascades through global supply chains, compounding interactions between physical and transition risks, and amplification via existing macroeconomic and financial fragilities like currency risk and indebtedness. Excluding these macro-financial dynamics from biodiversity risk scenarios may result in underestimated impacts, leaving economic policymakers such as central banks and ministries of finance with major blind spots affecting risk management and nature transition planning.
Targeted at academics and policymakers, this session will present cutting-edge research on the macrofinancial risks of biodiversity loss and transition policies. In scope are policy-relevant empirical contributions focusing on the feedback effects between ecological, economic, and/or financial dynamics. Led by UCL IIPP, this session welcomes both quantitative and qualitative approaches, with a special focus on showcasing diverse approaches to macroeconomic modelling. We especially welcome contributions from policymakers.
FIN13 Using biodiversity data for business sustainability and biodiversity risk in finance
FIN | Session
Conveners: Chiara Colesanti Senni
Co-conveners: PJ Stephenson
Businesses across sectors are increasingly striving to meet voluntary or statutory environmental reporting and disclosure requirements for biodiversity. Yet many companies and financial institutions struggle to obtain the biodiversity data they need to define, plan, monitor and report on their environmental impacts, dependencies, risks, and nature-positive outcomes. In addition, while the financial risks of climate change are increasingly scrutinized, the economic implications of nature degradation—such as biodiversity loss, water scarcity, soil degradation and marine pollution—remain poorly understood.
This workshop therefore
- explores the channels through which corporate dependencies and impacts on nature transmit from the real economy side (e.g., production) into financial markets through company valuations and asset prices.
- identifies key challenges and solutions for improving the availability of biodiversity data for business sustainability more broadly.
The workshop will bring together researchers from financial economics, sustainability science, business management, and conservation biology to identify challenges, opportunities and lessons learned from current research and business initiatives.
Participants will present theoretical models and empirical evidence that map the pathways from nature degradation to economic outcomes, focusing on two primary channels: the disruption of ecosystem services vital for production, and the transition risks arising from new environmental regulations, disclosure requirements (e.g., Corporate Sustainability Requirement Directive in Europe, Sustainability Disclosure Standards in the UK), and rising legal challenges on the destruction of nature.
They will also present case studies on the latest biodiversity metrics research and practical examples of biodiversity needs and uses relating to biodiversity credits, renewable energy, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, marine services, and sport.
We will address key questions such as:
- What biodiversity data do businesses need for assessing their impacts and dependencies and monitoring success of nature-positive initiatives?
- How do markets value a company’s reliance on specific ecosystem services like pollination or water filtration? Are there examples of financial losses due to companies’ dependence on degraded ecosystems and that can be observed at the scale of global financial markets?
- Are firms with significant negative impacts on biodiversity facing a higher cost of capital?
This workshop aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue on creating robust, actionable frameworks for corporates, investors, and policymakers.
Co-conveners: Fanny Cartellier, Kerrigan Unter, Elsa Almeida
FIN17 How Firms Can Govern Nature – From Biodiversity Risk to Financial and Strategic Value Creation
FIN | Session
Conveners: Martin Nerlinger
Co-conveners: Judith Walls; Charlotta Sirén; Judith Stroehle; Satu Teerikangas
Biodiversity loss poses profound ecological and governance challenges. Firms depend on ecosystem services such as water, pollination, and soil health, yet these dependencies are often unpriced and under-governed. This workshop examines how firms can govern nature to mitigate biodiversity risks and generate strategic and financial value, combining short keynotes with a moderated panel and interactive Q&A.
Walls: Business–nature dependencies, impacts, and risk measurement.
Stroehle: How governance structures and boards integrate biodiversity into firm strategy.
Nerlinger: Valuing biodiversity through financial transmission channels and reporting frameworks.
Sirén: Strategic innovation and nature-positive opportunities for firms.
Teerikangas (moderator): Panel discussion with the keynote speakers on actionable governance mechanisms.
Goals
Demonstrate how biodiversity risks and dependencies can be translated into business-relevant metrics.
Provide governance, finance, and innovation perspectives for embedding biodiversity into corporate decision-making.
Bridge theory and practice by identifying actionable mechanisms for firms, investors, and regulators.
Expected Outcomes
Participants will gain an integrated understanding of how biodiversity can be governed at the firm level to manage risk, drive innovation, and create long-term value while preserving and regenerating nature. The workshop will provide practical insights for executives, boards, and policymakers seeking credible and ethical governance solutions for biodiversity.
6. Oral and poster sessions LEG – Legislation and biodiversity
LEG1 Biodiversity Under Threat: Strengthening Legal Pathways to Counter Wildlife Trafficking
LEG | Session
Conveners: Krishna Prasad Acharya
Co-conveners: Jose Louies
Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a major but often under-addressed driver of biodiversity loss, threatening iconic and lesser-known species while undermining ecosystem integrity, national economies, and local livelihoods. This session brings together research, institutional experience, and policy insights to explore how strengthening legal frameworks, community engagement, and regional enforcement can effectively address wildlife trafficking and related crimes.
We invite contributions from regional platforms such as SAWEN, ASEAN-WEN, EU enforcement mechanisms, and global partners like TRAFFIC, UNODC, and CITES, alongside researchers and practitioners. Topics may include wildlife crime monitoring, legal and policy innovations, cross-border cooperation, digital tools for detection and disruption, and approaches to empower communities in enforcement.
This session also builds on the SDG agenda by examining the intersection between SDG 15 (Life on Land) and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions). Achieving biodiversity conservation targets—especially 15.7 and 15.c, which aim to end poaching and trafficking and build local capacity—requires robust legal systems, institutional coordination, and international enforcement cooperation as envisioned in SDG 16. By connecting conservation outcomes with legal strengthening, this session highlights the need for integrated governance responses to wildlife crime.
Our goal is to create a platform for dialogue, evidence-sharing, and future collaboration across science, policy, and enforcement communities engaged in combatting IWT.
LEG3 Rights in and of Nature
LEG | Session
Conveners: Lynne Shannon
Co-conveners: Nina Braude
Rights-based approaches are proving pivotal as we struggle with the challenges around biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation. Human rights span a broad spectrum from individual and community-based rights to national and global human rights to healthy ecosystems, which includes access. Rights of Nature, implicit in many Indigenous communities, have seen growing recognition in recent decades and, in several instances, personhood of nature/parts thereof have been granted legal standing. This introduces a new dimension to management of anthropogenic activities. In this session, we examine potential synergies and trade-offs when aiming for a balance between human rights and nature’s rights as we strive towards more desirable futures. We focus on rights-based approaches in managing human-nature interactions, with a view to transforming nature-human inter-relations and coexistence, and as a means to better implement real ecosystem-based management.
LEG4 Scientific Law, Legal Science and Everything in Between
LEG | Session
Conveners: Nina Braude
Co-conveners: Alessandro Mazzi
Biodiversity governance relies on scientific knowledge but what law does with that knowledge is far from straightforward. Legal systems don’t merely absorb ecological facts: they transform, filter, and reframe them. In doing so, law itself is reshaped. Simultaneously, scientific practices are shaped by legal frameworks: compressed into regulatory thresholds, adapted to procedural timelines, or excluded for failing to meet evidentiary standards. This session explores the dynamic, bidirectional relationship between law and science, and the complex practices and institutional spaces that result.
We invite contributions that critically examine how scientific knowledge is translated into legal and regulatory systems and how legal processes, in turn, shape the production, selection, and interpretation of the scientific practices, hypotheses, and forms of knowledge emerging in the biodiversity space. How do legal mandates, frameworks and preoccupations influence what counts as the “best available science”? How do legal and governance institutions navigate ecological uncertainty, plural knowledge systems, and competing interests? And how can regulatory and governance frameworks remain responsive to ecological realities without undermining legal legitimacy?
We particularly encourage interdisciplinary submissions, comparative work, case-studies and insights grounded in practice. This session aims to surface the assumptions, frictions, and creative possibilities that emerge when science and law attempt to speak to one another under pressure.
LEG5 The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies – Enhancing Marine Biodiversity
LEG | Session
Conveners: Megan Jungwiwattanaporn
Co-conveners: Grace Evans
Target 18 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework includes eliminating, phasing out, and reforming subsidies harmful to biodiversity by 2030. The WTO’s Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies will likely enter into force soon and will be an important regulatory addition to operationalizing this target. The WTO Agreement was adopted in 2022 to tackle harmful fisheries subsidies, including those subsidies that go to illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing, the fishing of overfished stocks, and fishing in the unregulated high seas. As of August 2025 it only needs three more ratifications to enter into force. Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing to create new rules to curb the subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity more broadly. This session will detail the importance of the WTO Agreement to biodiversity and what next steps the world can take to ensure the Agreement is implemented and finalized, especially in the lead up to the WTO’s Ministerial Conference in March 2026. (Potential conveners could include the International Institute for Sustainble Development, and the Stop Funding Overfishing Coalition)
LEG6 International and National Legal Frameworks and Governance for Transformative Ecosystem Restoration
LEG | Session
Conveners: An Cliquet
Co-conveners: Yang Liu
As biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation accelerate, restoration has become a central strategy to reverse ecological damage and ensure long-term sustainability. However, the legal frameworks governing restoration remain fragmented and weakly enforced. Strengthening coordination between international and national laws is critical to achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
This session explores how international environmental law can support restoration by better integrating with national legal systems. It examines both normative and institutional dimensions of restoration across national and international legal frameworks, with a focus on coordination.
We invite contributions that explore ecosystem restoration across diverse environments, focusing on:
- The legal basis for restoration under multilateral environmental agreements (e.g. CBD, Ramsar Convention, UNCCD, UNCLOS) and their operational mechanisms;
- The formulation, assessment, and reporting and monitoring of restoration plans under treaty regimes, and how these obligations are integrated into national laws;
- Jurisdictional and sovereignty challenges in restoration implementation, including coordination between States and among central and subnational authorities;
- The roles of international organizations, treaty bodies, dispute settlement mechanisms, NGOs, and private actors in developing and enforcing restoration-related norms at international and national levels;
- Innovative legal approaches at national and international levels to scale up restoration, including rights-based frameworks, due diligence duties, and ecosystem-based obligations.
7. Oral and poster sessions GBF – Implementing and achieving GBF goals and targets
GBF1 Advancing KMGBF Target 2: Overcoming Scientific and Socio-Ecological Barriers for Scaling Global Ecosystem Restoration under the UN Decade
GBF | Session
Conveners: Pradeep Kumar Dubey
Co-conveners: Paula R. Prist
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UN–DER) (2021–2030), co-led by UNEP and FAO, represents the most ambitious global effort to halt and reverse ecosystem degradation. Within this framework, the IUCN-led Science Task Force (STF) plays a vital role in providing the scientific foundation to guide, monitor, and accelerate restoration.
This session will explore how nations and societies can advance Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) Target 2–to restore at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, inland water, coastal, and marine ecosystems by 2030–while fostering broader systemic transformation. Key barriers include challenges in measuring restoration progress, uncertainties in defining degradation, weak integration of socio-economic realities, limited use of spatial prioritization, and difficulties in distinguishing interventions from demonstrable ecological and social gains.
Drawing on STF expertise, the session will emphasize actionable solutions such as robust ecological and socio-economic indicators, decision-support tools, and scalable approaches for monitoring and upscaling. Special attention will be given to the contributions of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), whose knowledge systems and stewardship practices are critical for inclusive and resilient restoration strategies.
We invite contributions from researchers, practitioners, policymakers, civil society, governments, private sector actors, and IPLCs, highlighting case studies and innovations from diverse contexts. Outcomes will inform STF and Best Practices Task Force processes, supporting evidence-based decision-making and catalyzing transformative restoration under the UN-DER and KMGBF Target 2.
GBF2 Bridging biodiversity and society: Planning and governing multifunctional green areas in urban and peri-urban landscapes
GBF | Session
Conveners: Stephanie Schwab Cammarano
Co-conveners: Maria Garcia Martin; Simona Gradinaru
While urbanization can threaten biodiversity, the sustainable transformation of urban landscapes is key to achieving the 2030 GBF targets. Conserving and expanding urban and peri-urban green areas not only provides habitat for wildlife, sustains ecosystem services, and enhances climate resilience, but also supports human well-being. Yet, the multifunctional potential of urban green spaces is often underused due to weak regulations, limited implementation of biodiversity measures, siloed decision-making, and competing land-use demands.
This session examines how greening measures in urban and peri-urban environments can maximize benefits for both ecosystems and society. It explores what good examples of biodiversity-inclusive planning, governance, and management processes look like, for example, by including both traditional and scientific knowledge about species and habitats in the territory. We invite contributions on land-use regulations, planning processes, and policies that foster biodiversity in urban and peri-urban areas. Greening measures can include, for example, non-sealing and greening policies, river restoration, urban forestry, native planting, and other nature-based solutions or blue-green infrastructures. We focus on approaches with transformative leverage, capable of turning urban environments into diverse and resilient habitats for human and non-human species.
By bringing together research that integrates natural and social sciences, showcases biodiversity mainstreaming, and reflects on barriers and enablers of implementation, the session will highlight how collaborative and integrated approaches can accelerate GBF implementation and expand the quantity, quality, connectivity, accessibility, and social benefits of urban green spaces.
GBF3 Crossing Time and Disciplines to Conserve Blue Ocean Biodiversity
GBF | Session
Conveners: Marina Costa Rillo
Co-conveners: Taranjot Kaur; Wolfgang Kiessling; Carl Reddin; Isaiah Smith
The ocean sustains much of Earth’s biodiversity, yet it remains understudied, undervalued, and increasingly imperilled. Preserving biodiversity in the Blue Ocean – marine areas beyond national jurisdiction – is challenged by sparse data, political and legal issues, and mounting anthropogenic pressures, including climate change.
Marine biodiversity baselines, from which anthropogenic impact is assessed, require long-term data. This session explores how interdisciplinary knowledge – particularly integrating paleobiological, historical, ecological, and social perspectives – can support GBF Target 3 (the „30×30“ goal) by informing the identification and design of ecologically representative marine protected areas (MPAs). Fossil and historical records provide critical information to identify threatened species, understand extinction dynamics, and guide the conservation of genetic, taxonomic, and functional diversity – contributing to GBF Target 4. Given the accelerating impacts of climate change, long-term perspectives can anticipate marine biodiversity shifts and strengthen the effectiveness of conservation strategies, supporting GBF Target 8.
We invite contributions that demonstrate how time-extended data, integrative modelling, and interdisciplinary approaches can inform spatial prioritization, improve extinction risk assessments, and anticipate future changes in marine ecosystems. By bridging disciplines and timescales, this session aims to support transformative action toward resilient and inclusive ocean stewardship under the Global Biodiversity Framework.
GBF4 Implementing and achieving the GBF goals and targets for genetic diversity
GBF | Session
Conveners: Ancuta Fedorca
Co-conveners: Isa-Rita M. Russo; Linda Laikre; Christina Hvilson; Katie Millette
Actions for biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable use require assessments and effective monitoring at all levels which includes genetic diversity. Accurate, useful, and affordable indicators and metrics are needed for such monitoring, in order to identify threats at early stages as well as evaluation outcomes of restoration efforts and modified management strategies, and adjustments of such where needed. Several genetic indicators that are a part of Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Global Biodiversity Framework, developed and advanced in an ongoing manner with several CBD Parties, are helping meet this need. For example, the Headline indicator A.4. helps to track whether populations of species are large enough to sustain their long-term adaptive potential and resilience. In parallel, scientists are working to develop and apply DNA-based indicators that can follow other, more specific, or complex trends in genetic diversity. Furthermore, recent advances, alongside the headline focus on the size of populations, open the door to using scalable methods like Earth Observation to help monitor genetic diversity. In this session, you will learn about how to use these indicators and knowledge learned from working with countries to monitor genetic diversity at local, national, and international scales for biodiversity conservation and restoration.
GBF5 Incorporating EO technologies into large scale monitoring and reporting of GBF indicators
GBF | Session
Conveners: Claudia Röösli
Co-conveners: Meredith C. Schuman; Sean Hoban; Isabelle Helfenstein; Oliver Selmoni
In adopting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and its respective monitoring framework, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) committed to national goals and targets for biodiversity and to reporting on indicators of their progress. Earth Observation (EO) should be leveraged to support the calculation and observation of these indicators for purposes of monitoring and reporting on national levels. EO can further provide cost-effective, time-critical and spatially continuous input for the conservation of biodiversity worldwide.
Incorporating EO technologies and resulting information into the framework of the GBF requires close interdisciplinary collaboration and the exchange of knowledge among specialists of various backgrounds. Within this session, we aim to facilitate the exchange of ideas and collaborations among biodiversity practitioners, scientists (EO- and non-EO specialists), policy makers, and industry experts. We work toward filling gaps between the knowledge and technologies available to researchers and the information needed for large scale reporting. We invite abstracts that address current needs and gaps in biodiversity monitoring, that demonstrate the potential of EO technology to fill monitoring gaps, combine different data sources including remote sensing technologies for large scale biodiversity monitoring, and demonstrate current limitations. We welcome abstracts including but not limited to the GBF indicators, Essential Biodiversity and Ecosystem Variables, and for effective biodiversity conservation on large scales.
GBF6 Mapping Life: Tools and approaches to mapping biodiversity for environmental assessments
GBF | Session
Conveners: Chrishen Gomez
Co-conveners: Harrison Carter; Emma O’Donnell; Ashley Bang
Spatial prioritisation sits the at the heart of conservation planning as it determines how effectively space is utilised and allocated resources. The post-2020 CBD targets spurred not only the consolidation of global biodiversity datasets (e.g GBIF) but also the creation of tools for modelling, mapping and visualising biological processes. Interactive maps have become a go-to medium for conveying scientific information and bridging the knowledge-practise barrier. Digital maps, with their intuitive dashboards are increasingly used for quantifying nature-related risks (e.g ABC-map, TNFD), and predicting the impact of future developments (COLA, Jants et al. 2024).
The broad suite of tools that are available signals an encouraging trend of demand among practitioners in both the public and private sector. It is imperative ,however, that these digital maps are underpinned by tested biodiversity models, with bounds of use that are understood and communicated clearly. Modelling biodiversity is a active and rapidly developing field of science, and will be elevated by including practitioners in the design process of these visualisation platforms to ensure model outputs meet the specific needs of practitioners and regulators.
Therefore, at the World Biodiversity Forum 2026, we are proposing a session called ‘Mapping Life’ with the explicit objective of convening both developers and users of biodiversity maps. The session will, by design, reach across disciplinary divides and offer an opportunity for practitioners and scientists to develop a shared understanding and vocabulary around the subject.
For examples of biodiversity mapping tools, see:
https://www.ibat-alliance.org
https://abc-map.fao.org
GBF7 Realising European conservation, restoration and connectivity ambitions under future climate and land use
GBF | Session
Conveners: Louise O’Connor
Co-conveners: Martin Jung
Despite a dense network of protected areas across Europe, the continent’s biodiversity and ecosystems remain under pressure. The KM GBF, EU Biodiversity Strategy, and Nature Restoration Regulation have set ambitious targets: protect 30% of land and sea areas by 2030 (with 10% under strict protection) and restore at least 20% of degraded ecosystems. Achieving these goals amid climate and land use changes requires a coordinated, science-based approach, especially with limited conservation resources. There is a need to identify and prioritise areas of high ecological value to halt biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and enhance ecological connectivity and climate resilience. Drawing on the NaturaConnect project, this session will highlight how biodiversity is changing across Europe, and explore options to effectively protect and restore it. We will showcase research that integrates biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate resilience to inform national and transboundary conservation planning and deliver on multiple GBF targets. Topics include: species and habitat modelling under future land use and climate scenarios (GBF Target 8); mapping ecosystem services (Targets 11, 12); defining favourable reference ranges for species recovery (Target 4); climate risk mapping for resilient conservation planning (Target 8); modelling ecological connectivity (Target 3); integrated spatial planning for conservation, strict protection and restoration (Targets 1, 2, 3); and pathways to translate science into policy (Targets 19, 21). This session aims to foster dialogue on how to operationalise Europe’s conservation and restoration ambitions in a changing world, towards a more connected, resilient, and biodiverse Europe for 2030 and beyond.
GBF8 Towards just and effective implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework
GBF | Session
Conveners: Ina Lehmann
Co-conveners: Marcel Kok
When Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) in December 2022, hopes were high that it would set the world on the path for realizing its vision of “living in harmony with nature by 2050”. Indeed, several of the GBF’s 23 action-oriented targets for 2030 are more specific than its predecessor, the 2010-2020 Aichi Targets, and at least on paper, the GBF significantly strengthens the CBD’s accountability mechanisms. COP 17 in October 2026 will see the first global stocktake of parties’ collective progress towards achieving the GBF’s 2030 targets and 2050 vision. However, the official stocktaking process has two blind spots related to, first, its collective character, which does not aim at assessing countries’ individual performance, and, second, its strong focus on ecological indicators, which ignores many social and governance aspects.
Shortly before CBD COP 17, this session will open up a space for broader analysis of progress towards just and effective GBF implementation. We aim to critically discuss topics such as the role of social and governance indicators in the GBF’s monitoring framework, the legal and political strength of its broader accountability framework, national efforts at just GBF implementation (including, but not limited to, aspects of distributive, procedural, and recognition justice), processes of translating GBF norms into national contexts, etc. We invite submissions from scholars and practitioners and particularly value contributions that combine rigorous analysis of the status quo with forward-looking policy recommendations. We will consider publication of a policy brief or perspectives paper for CBD COP 17 together with session contributors shortly after the session.
8. Oral and poster sessions TRA – Transformative change, reconnecting with nature and the role of Indigenous Peoples
TRA1 Acting on the IPBES Call: Knowledge, Power, and Practice for Transformative Change Related to Biodiversity
TRA | Session
Conveners: Hannah Gosnell
Co-conveners: Julia Leventon; Sebastian Villasante; Lucas Alejandro Garibaldi; Arun Agrawal
In 2024, the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (TCA) Summary for Policy Makers set out a powerful call: to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss through fundamental, system-wide reconfigurations of human-nature interactions. It outlined visions and theories of transformative change; barriers and challenges for taking action; and strategies and actions for delivering transformative change. While noting that practical pathways and grounded strategies for enacting transformative change remain elusive, contested, and politically fraught, the IPBES TCA provides a framework for action.
This session explores how the overarching objectives, principles, and strategies of the IPBES TCA can be put into action—examining emerging practices, partnerships, governance innovations, and knowledge systems that support systemic shifts toward just and sustainable futures for nature and people. Contributors should include specific reference to the IPBES TCA. We welcome practice and research examples, covering topics including, but not limited to:
● The underlying causes of biodiversity loss and nature’s decline, including disconnection from nature
● What transformative change looks like in practice.
● How different approaches to transformative change seek to address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss.
● How entrenched power structures and institutions can be navigated or reshaped.
● The role of co-production, participation, and diverse knowledge systems (including Indigenous and local knowledge).
● The role of Indigenous peoples in transformative change
● The role of creativity and imagination for transformative change
● Experiences in enacting pathways, strategies and actions for transformative change, including reconnection with nature
TRA2 Hope: Documenting, tracing and understanding the diversity and the global spread of collective actions for transformative change
TRA | Session
Conveners: Dianty Ningrum
Co-conveners: Caroline Schill; Peter Søgaard Jørgensen; Craig Kauffman; Krushil Watene
A substantial amount of ongoing studies are dedicated to investigate what can bring about transformative change. Yet, are scientists doing a good enough job at documenting the spread and diversity of collective actions for transformative change? Can we build a joint and coordinated approach for documenting the diffusion of transformative ideas and action across scales? What can we learn from such diverse actions and ideas for biodiversity-positive, just, and equitable local and global futures?
Hope—grounded in evidence of meaningful action—can inspire change agents to persist through setbacks, innovate in the face of complexity, and amplify existing initiatives. Documenting ongoing collective actions for transformative change are thus not only descriptive but catalytic.
In this session, we explore new approaches for documenting the global spread of diverse collective actions for transformative change. We call for contributions which document the scale and diversity of action striving towards transformation of human-nature relationships. We especially welcome empirical evidence of actions that are observed globally and involve plural sets of actors and values, in particular local and indigenous communities.
This session will feature reflections from the recent IPBES Transformative Change assessment as well as preliminary results from the ongoing ‘Hope assessment’ which tracks the attempts at transformation in 9 cross-cutting systems of society, including the economy, law, spatial planning, education, arts and culture. The assessment documents an acceleration in the global diffusion of diverse initiatives in these systems, which suggests that there is a substantial, hopeful global spreading of collective actions with capacity to advance transformative change.
TRA4 Philosophies of Biodiversity Conservation
TRA | Session
Conveners: Teea Kortetmaki
Co-conveners: Giovanni Frigo; Damien Delorme; Anna Wienhues
We welcome contributions that discuss biodiversity conservation from the perspective of philosophy: ethics, aesthetics, the philosophy of science, and political theory. Particularly welcome are papers on WBF general theme “leading transformation together”. Other topics include but are not limited to:
• The philosophy of valuing and protecting biodiversity;
• Justice in and politics of biodiversity conservation, e.g. ownership of genetic resources, democracy and biodiversity, data issues, bio/ecosecurity;
• Ethical analysis of different conservation techniques and strategies (e.g. de-extinction, natural vs. artificial biodiversity conservation, assisted migration, restoration);
• Analysis (and critique) of the ‘biodiversity’ and/or related conservation concepts;
We are open to presentations from all philosophical positions and traditions. The WBF conference attracts audience interested in different aspects of biodiversity conservation. Therefore, we emphasise that presentations should address an interdisciplinary audience. Interested presenters will also have the opportunity to share their draft papers with other session participants before the conference to in-depth exchange.
TRA5 Reconnecting Communities and Forests for Biodiversity Conservation in a Changing World
TRA | Session
Conveners: Prakash Kumar Paudel
Co-conveners: Krishna Prasad Acharya
Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) have long played vital roles in forest stewardship, shaping biodiversity conservation, cultural identity, and ecosystem resilience. Yet globally, shifting socio-political, economic, demographic, and ecological contexts are weakening these ties. This session explores how to meaningfully reconnect communities with forests through inclusive, adaptive, and forward-looking governance.
Drawing on diverse experiences in participatory forestry and landscape management, the session examines how governance transitions, rural outmigration, reduced forest dependency, and shifting markets are reshaping community-forest relations. We will discuss legal innovations, digital tools, recognition mechanisms, and territorial approaches that offer new pathways forward.
We invite papers that analyze:
Governance transitions and representation of IPLCs in forest and biodiversity governance.
Social and demographic change and its effects on collective forest action.
Recognizing and scaling IPLC stewardship through OECMs and other legal-policy tools.
Reconnecting fragmented forests and communities via adaptive governance and co-management.
Rethinking community forestry models for long-term sustainability.
TRA6 Reimagining Biodiversity Governance through Relational and Constitutive Values
TRA | Session
Conveners: Hiroe Ishihara
Co-conveners: Mayumi Fukunaga; Chiho Ochiai
Achieving transformative change in biodiversity governance requires more than new tools—it demands a fundamental rethinking of how we value and relate to nature. This session examines how relational and constitutive values can inform more inclusive, pluralistic, and just governance. Building on the IPBES Values Assessment, which positioned relational values alongside intrinsic and instrumental values, we extend the conversation by introducing constitutive values—focusing on how valuations emerge over time through cultural practices, social interactions, and institutions. This shifts attention from the content of values to the processes that generate, sustain, and transform them, including how certain values come to dominate or decline.
Recognising these social and historical dynamics helps identify leverage points for change and engage with Indigenous and local knowledge systems—not only as sources of alternative values, but as reflections of distinct ontologies and governance logics. By foregrounding culturally embedded and historically situated modes of valuation, constitutive values illuminate context-sensitive, power-aware pathways for reconnecting people and nature.
The session invites presentations that explore: (1) how relational and constitutive values are produced, reproduced, or contested; (2) how tensions among values are negotiated in governance; (3) how socio-ecological change affects their durability or transformation; and (4) conceptual and methodological innovations for making these values actionable. Together, we aim to advance understanding of how culturally embedded values shape governance and to explore transformative pathways for navigating value pluralism.
TRA7 Transformative Change Assessment and Sustainable Development
TRA | Session
Conveners: A. Agrawal
Co-conveners: Sebastian Villasante; Ed Carr; Hannah Gosnell; Fiona Gladstone
The IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (2024) advances an actionable framework for assessing strategies and interventions to achieve the sustainable development goals. Its emphasis on transformative change as integral changes in views, structures, and practices can be applied to interventions for advancing the SDGs and the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. Thus the TCA proposes a novel reconceptualization of the means to achieve and advance targets associated with the 17 SDGs and with the 2050 Vision of the Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention of Biological Diversity.
A systematic understanding of TC is critical to achieve the SDGs and the 2050 Vision because the SDGs and the 2050 Vision envisages a complete transformation of global economies and natural systems. To achieve the SDGs and the Global Vision, we must reconceptualize strategies and mechanisms that build on the insights of the TCA to advance these global goals. The TCA’s framework for transformative change pinpoints the key elements missing from current efforts by governments, non-profits, and business organizations to advance the SDGs. It highlights how attention to integral shifts in views, structures and practices can be incorporated into SDG and biodiversity focused efforts for more systematic advance for a better world for biodiversity and people. The proposed panel session will focus on the sustainable development goals closely related to biodiversity and nature: Life below water, Life on land, Climate action, and Responsible consumption and production. The papers will analyze opportunities for common interventions related to these goals to assess how they can lead to transformative change for sustainable development through integral shifts in views, structures and practices.
TRA8 Transforming Consumption and Production for Biodiversity Positive Futures
TRA | Session
Conveners: Outi Uusitalo
Co-conveners: Maria Pecoraro
Biodiversity loss is a great danger for humanity and planetary wellbeing on Earth. The root causes of biodiversity loss are connected to human production and consumption practices which create pressure to increasing the exploitation of natural resources. According to Richardson et al. (2023) six of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed due to the impacts of human activity and extensive resource use. These overshoots are driven by unsustainable consumption of energy, water and materials.
This session explores the complex interdependencies between economic systems and ecological integrity, addressing how choices in agriculture, manufacturing, and consumer behaviour directly affect biodiversity outcomes. In line with the conference theme ‘Leading Transformation Together’, we highlight the urgency of confronting the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss by rethinking production and consumption within planetary boundaries, and by co-developing biodiversity-positive futures grounded in justice and equity. We invite papers that foster discussion and share insights on how biodiversity is interconnected with consumption, production, markets and marketing systems. We bring together researchers to explore how consumption and production patterns—across sectors and scales—can either undermine or support biodiversity.
Through interdisciplinary perspectives, we examine both drivers of biodiversity loss and opportunities for transformative practices that align production and consumption with planetary boundaries. We welcome presenters from a variety of backgrounds, for example ecologist or biodiversity researchers, environmental economists, researchers of sustainable business, consumer researchers, policy experts on biodiversity and trade, or indigenous community researchers.
9. Oral and poster sessions CON – Connecting science, society and practice
CON1 Aesthetics and Politics of Urban Biodiversity: Beauty, Charisma, and Civic Identity
CON | Session
Conveners: Ewa Machotka
Co-conveners: Takehiro Watanabe
Aesthetics play a key role in how urban biodiversity is imagined, communicated, and governed. In turn, biodiversity shapes civic identity, place iconography, and human–nature relationships. Its significance is often negotiated through design choices, visual conventions, and culturally shaped standards of beauty.
Conservationists have long used visual strategies—such as charismatic species and iconic landscapes—to build public support, as seen in European rewilding or the branding of animals like pandas. While effective, such approaches can oversimplify ecological complexity. Urban contexts intensify these dynamics. Non-native species, introduced via the pet trade or ornamental horticulture, gain appeal through exoticized aesthetics shaped by consumer trends. Curated spaces like zoos, parks, and gardens often priviledge spectacle over local ecology. Nature-based solutions combine ecological and aesthetic aims, while vernacular practices—like UK allotments or Tokyo’s improvised planters—are often excluded from formal biodiversity frameworks.
This session invites interdisciplinary dialogue on how urban aesthetics shape biodiversity policy and public understanding. We welcome case studies exploring how aesthetic norms influence which species and habitats are preserved, altered, or erased—and how such choices are justified through visual and cultural frameworks.
As urban biodiversity becomes central to GBF 2030 targets, we aim to identify culturally grounded, ecologically just, and ethically aware approaches to implementation by examining the aesthetic politics of biodiversity in cities.
CON2 Advancing Global Ocean Biodiversity Conservation through Innovative Approaches
CON | Session
Conveners: Peter Teye Busumprah
Co-conveners: Hadeer Elkhouly; Adeoye Olusola; Prof . Ruby Hanson
This session aims to address the UN Ocean Decade Challenge 2 – which focuses on protect and preserve the biodiversity and Ecosystem and the SDG 14 which focuses on Life below water.
This session aims to bring together researchers, policymakers, conservation practitioners, and industry stakeholders to share innovative strategies and recent advancements in protecting and restoring ocean biodiversity. As marine ecosystems face mounting pressures from climate change, overfishing, pollution, and habitat destruction, collaborative efforts are crucial to ensure their resilience and sustainability.
We invite submissions that highlight successful case studies, technological innovations (such as AI, remote sensing, and genetic tools), policy frameworks, and community-led initiatives that contribute to biodiversity conservation. The session will facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue, fostering knowledge exchange and fostering partnerships across sectors and regions.
By sharing diverse perspectives and cutting-edge research, this session aims to inspire actionable solutions and strengthen global commitments towards preserving the rich biodiversity of our oceans. Topics of interest include marine protected areas, ecosystem-based management, species recovery programs, and capacity building in ocean governance.
This session aims to contribute to the UN Ocean Decade project – African Ocean Biodiversity Atlas which focuses on developing and deploying Multifunctional Ocean Applications and technologies that enhance ocean awareness and sustainability in Africa and beyond.
CON3 Art as a Catalyst: Biodiversity and Public Understanding
CON | Session
Conveners: Henry Fair
Co-conveners: Uwe Moldryzk; Linda Gallé
“Biodiversity” is a term which is understood by professionals, but not by citizens or the politicians that must effectuate it.
The benefits that the average person receives from biodiversity are even less comprehended.
Yet public support for the elements that promote biodiversity is essential, as those elements are so nebulous. And it’s almost impossible to explain with words.
Art, however, can tell that story. Humans are visual, dialog rarely changes minds. Opinions change with personal contact/emotion/impact. We respond to emotional appeal, and that is how art engages. And once engaged, people desire more: knowledge understanding, grasp.
And thus “art” can explain science. It makes people interested, and then they want to know more.
CON4 Biodiversity Evidence: extracting and liberating biodiversity knowledge from scientific literature
CON | Session
Conveners: Donat Agosti
Co-conveners: Clara Zemp; Davnah Urbach; Giorgia Camperio
Scientific literature has grown over time, covering an increasing number of topics. Literature databases, search engines, artificial intelligence and natural language processing-based approaches to text analysis have evolved, allowing increasingly complex queries of large volumes of information. A rising number of literature reviews and meta-analyses synthesizing the state of research in specific fields have been published.
Despite methodological progress, the extraction, synthesis, and assessment of biodiversity information is often biased and seldom transparent, comprehensive, systematic, nor reproducible. Reasons range from the fact that biodiversity literature is widely distributed and inconsistently structured to difficulties with vocabularies and definitions. Collaborations between biodiversity, social, and computer scientists are needed to achieve progress in literature-based biodiversity knowledge extraction.
Digitization and AI offer ways to enhance access and usability, but major challenges remain.
The Disentis Roadmap, a decadal initiative supported by over 100 scientists and organizations, addresses these by making literature data machine-accessible and actionable. Practical steps include discovering and gathering publications via the Biodiversity Literature Repository and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, converting them for structured reuse, and integrating outputs into infrastructures such as GBIF and Biodiversity PMC.
This 2×90-minute is divided in two parts: 1) Provides an overview of current applications, methods and approaches highlighting the diversity of questions that can be tackled via evidence synthesis. Contributions from searching/reviewing the grey and scientific literature to knowledge synthesis are invited. 2) Presents and critically assesses the Disentis Roadmap’s approach to creating a reusable biodiversity literature corpus, explore pathways to scale it for researchers, policy-makers, and the public, and invite community involvement. This session is part of the “Biodiversity Evidence” series.
Co-conveners: Mark Snethlage, Patrick Ruch, Rainer Krug, Rob Waterhouse
CON5 Biodiversity Literacy – best-practice examples from education and citizens science
CON | Session
Conveners: Patrick Kuss
Co-conveners: Regine Balmer; J. Hense; Stefan Eggenberg
Biodiversity literacy is a prerequisite for biodiversity research, the design and implementation of biodiversity management schemes as much as for effective communication on biodiversity. Yet, reports increasingly show a decline in the ability to recognize and identify species, habitats and ecological processes. At the same time, the slow and often invisible process of biodiversity loss is difficult to communicate in ways that mobilize broad societal support. Keywords and concepts that have been coined are e.g. the “erosion of taxonomists”, “plant blindness”, “nature (dis-)connectedness” and “extinction of experience”.
Promoting biodiversity competence is therefore a central challenge. Since biodiversity literacy is context-dependent within and across cultures, mainstreaming efforts must draw on diverse approaches. In this session, we highlight challenges and showcase best-practice examples from a) education and b) citizens science projects that train and foster biodiversity literacy in formal and informal settings. The goal is to share knowledge and ideas about didactic approaches to biodiversity teaching, the potential of digital tools for mentored or self-organized learning, and current trends that combine modern digital formats with traditional field-based experiences. Further aspects include building blocks for life-long learning, the design and management of citizens science projects, strategies for fostering long-term engagement of biodiversity stewards, and the requirements for educating the next generation of teachers and facilitators.
CON6 Bridging Science and Industry: Career Paths for Biology Scientists
CON | Session
Conveners: Eric Rieux
Co-conveners: Suzon Bedu
Finding research and/or teaching positions within academia or the public sector can be challenging for young scientists. Meanwhile, integrating Biodiversity and, more broadly, „Nature“ into business strategies is a growing priority for the private sector. This shift is driven by government regulations and the need for businesses to adapt their models to mitigate risks associated with biodiversity loss.
This session will explore and highlight the diverse career opportunities available for young (and experienced) scientists in the private sector, including consultancies, project developers, energy companies, the financial sector, equipment manufacturers, and more. From fieldwork in tropical forests or European wetlands to using GIS and data analysis, drafting reports, developing biodiversity management plans, or crafting policy papers, there are numerous ways to make a positive impact on nature while pursuing one’s passion and expertise.
We invite proposals from private sector stakeholders to present real-world examples of roles held by scientists within their organizations.
Goals:
• Introduce young scientists to potential career paths in the private sector.
• Foster connections between academia and industry.
Expected Outcomes:
• Increased awareness of career opportunities in biodiversity-related fields.
• Networking between scientists and industry professionals.
• Potential short- and medium-term job placements and collaborations.
CON7 Citizen science, co-creation, and other participative approaches for achieving actionable results
CON | Session
Conveners: Julian Taffner
Co-conveners: Vladimir Gross; Philipp Sprenger
Citizen science – a form of research where lay people contribute to scientific projects – has become increasingly important in the field of biodiversity research by helping to plug both temporal and spatial gaps in scientific projects as well as for scalability. Attractive projects are able to leverage public interest to collect vast amounts of data that would otherwise have been impossible with a limited budget and team size. Recent advances in AI and broad appeal via smartphone apps allow for even broader and more complex analyses. Not only researchers, but also the citizen scientists themselves benefit from the engagement, as such activities have been shown to promote a sense of connection to nature, improve mental health, and strengthen collective action for environmental conservation. Because of these mutual benefits, co-creation – whereby nonacademic partners are involved in scientific projects from the beginning – is often considered the gold standard for designing programs intended to produce actionable results. Besides exploring citizen science, co-creation, and other participative strategies for designing and carrying out collaborative and transdisciplinary research projects, the goals of this session include exemplifying the success of citizen science approaches, extrapolating the success factors and probing the limits of upscaling citizen science through the use of AI. We invite participants to share their approaches, methods, and results, focusing on their collaborations with nonacademic partners on the ground.
CON8 Digital Twins for connecting science, society and practice
CON | Session
Conveners: Koen de Koning
Co-conveners: Juergen Groeneveld
Digital twins (DTs) are an emerging tool in ecology and biodiversity conservation, offering real-time, evidence-based insights into natural systems. These dynamic models evolve with their real-world counterparts, providing decision-makers and practitioners with up-to-date information on environmental states and trends. By integrating cutting-edge science, real-time monitoring data, AI, and predictive modelling, DTs create lifelike virtual representations of ecosystems. This enables users to test conservation interventions and receive immediate feedback, supporting more informed decision-making.
This session welcomes all submissions presenting DTs or prototype DTs, irrespective of their development stage or maturity level. Presenters are invited to emphasise how their DTs are or can be used by practitioners and decision makers for better informed conservation decision-making. This session also welcomes concepts and ideas about how DTs can foster stronger connection between science, society and practice. Lastly, this session invites ideas or examples of DTs that nurture interaction and engagement of people with the natural environment.
CON9 Effectively bridging science and practice for actionable biodiversity conservation in forest management
CON | Session
Conveners: Ceres Barros
Co-conveners: Matthew Betts; Eliot McIntire
Forests cover 31% of the world’s land-area, harbour immense levels of biodiversity, and provide highly valuable ecosystem services (ES). In 2020, half of the world’s forests had a management plan, mostly for wood products. Yet, forest management is still mostly focused on maximizing for a single objective (e.g. timber) and protecting it from a single disturbance (e.g. fire). Consequently, forest biodiversity continues to decline globally and forests and their ES are threatened by current and future environmental changes. Scientists, practitioners, and decision-makers have called for better knowledge exchange, co-production of research, and co-management with communities, and for a shift towards management of multiple ES and disturbances. Also, Indigenous and local knowledge has been grossly underrepresented in forest management globally despite its relevance to guide management actions. These challenges existing in the science, policy and action interface are well-identified. We now need to identify and learn from existing and potential solutions that can shift societies towards more holistic forest management. We will feature a panel of leaders at bridging science and management, complemented by presentations of useful tools and case studies for those seeking more effective solutions that promote biodiversity. This hybrid format will stimulate debate between presenters and the audience, and a discussion of how and which biodiversity indicators can be used by practitioners and how to manage biodiversity values along with economic and socio-cultural values, community safety and Indigenous-led forest management. We will strive to have a diverse and inclusive set of speakers representing the Indigenous, local community, scientific, managerial, and decision/policy spheres.
CON10 From concept to practice: unlocking non-material nature’s contributions for transformative change
CON | Session
Conveners: Tanara Renard Truong
Co-conveners: Yvonne Walz; Marion Mehring; Patrick Flamm
Non-material Nature’s Contributions to People (NCPs) play a crucial role in shaping how societies value and interact with biodiversity. Yet these contributions are often difficult to assess and underrepresented in science-policy and decision-making contexts.
This session brings together researchers from the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the Leibniz Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research, who are engaged in collaborative efforts to better integrate non-material NCPs into biodiversity science, policy and practice.
Building on a recent cross-institutional dialogue, the session will explore stakeholder values, trade-offs, conflicts, and scale-related challenges in assessing non-material NCPs and their implications for policy making. Participants will share approaches and identify synergies across disciplines and institutions, with the goal of informing more inclusive and policy-relevant biodiversity research.
The session is open to researchers, practitioners and societal actors working at the science-policy interface on NCPs, ecosystem services, biodiversity governance and transformative change, including representatives of science-policy platforms, MEAs, Indigenous and local knowledge holders and biodiversity decision-makers. Contributors will share conceptual insights and applied approaches, highlighting synergies between different disciplines and institutions. The emphasis will be on how these contributions can inform more inclusive, value-sensitive and policy-relevant biodiversity planning and decision-making. The aim is to contribute to bridging the gap between conceptual work and actionable insights for addressing biodiversity challenges.
CON11 Moving from nature-based solution living labs to transformative practice labs
CON | Session
Conveners: Rita Sousa Silva
Co-conveners: Sonia Gantioler; Amy Oen; Tom Wild
This session explores the potential of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in effectively supporting transformative change. Coined as a term for the protection, restoration or sustainable use of ecosystems to address several societal challenges simultaneously, NbS can tackle related underlying problems or root causes for a fundamental and system-wide reorganisation across technological, economic and social factors. This especially applies when their implementation challenges existing mindsets, value systems, human-non-human-nature relationships and institutional barriers, and creates space(s) for new, collaborative governance approaches. Many current environmental and planning decisions are, however, shaped by long-standing perspectives, habits, power structures, and institutional rules that often reinforce an unsustainable status quo. These path dependencies and lock-ins can hinder innovation, limit inclusion, affect viability, and delay needed systemic changes, esp. for a more nature-positive economy. According to our recently collected insights, this refers to a combination of entrenched structural and cultural barriers, incl. rigid regulations and slow policy processes, conflicting mandates and poor coordination across governance levels, chronic underinvestment in maintenance, low awareness, and competing framings of NbS success that privilege short-term economic returns over ecological goals. These are further compounded by tensions between the urban-rural divide, locally adapted interventions that strengthen community engagement and large-scale approaches that promise a wide reach and impact, and by the lack of consistent mechanisms, whether regulatory or incentive-based, that can sustain NbS over time and maintain fairness in who benefits and who bears the costs.
CON12 Planning for Biodiversity: Transforming the roles of science and society in land use planning and practice.
CON | Session
Conveners: Julia Leventon
Co-conveners: Nynke Schulp; Marina Knickel; Nora Hein
Strategic spatial planning is a key tool to align land use with biodiversity conservation and restoration and create transformative change. In current policy trajectories, spatial planning must address scientific imperatives alongside multi-sectoral policy goals (e.g. housing, mobility) while opening spaces for democracy and participation. Questions of justice and equity must be front and centre because groups most affected by environmental change have often been marginalised in decision-making.
In this session, we welcome abstracts that investigate how spatial planning (as a practice and research topic) is transforming to deliver transformative change for biodiversity. This topic could include how, and with what qualities, planning systems, land governance, and participatory processes contribute to biodiversity outcomes across diverse geographical, cultural, and sectoral contexts. Contributions could address (for example) integrative planning approaches that mainstream biodiversity, policy coherence and cross-sectoral governance, the role of participatory and inclusive planning processes, and empirical case studies of transformative planning. This session is hosted by the PLUS Change project (Planning Land Use Strategies in a Changing World). Due to the focus of the project, we are looking for submissions that consider questions of justice, democracy and participation in planning.
This session aims to contribute actionable knowledge on the role of land use planning in biodiversity-positive land use transformations. We intend to collate lessons learned for broader dissemination into current science-policy considerations, including for example the IPBES assessment on spatial planning and the IPCC report on Cities and Climate Change.
CON13 Renewable Energies and Biodiversity
CON | Session
Conveners: Leila Schuh
Co-conveners: Anne Kempel; Silke Bauer; Adrienne Grêt-Regamey; Tobias Wechsler
Many countries have committed to addressing two global challenges – the transition to a carbon-neutral energy production and the halt and reversal of biodiversity loss. Consequently, much research has been devoted at the interface of these topics, such as the consequences of renewable energy infrastructure and operation on biodiversity and ecosystem functions, solutions to minimize or mitigate negative impacts, and the underlying drivers of public opinion about renewable energy generation and biodiversity stewardship.
The goal of this session is to review the current state of knowledge at the interface of biodiversity and renewable energies, to identify persisting knowledge gaps, and to spark discussions about pathways towards a biodiversity-friendly energy transition. We welcome contributions covering any of the renewable energy sources, namely solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, biogas, tidal- and wave energy, geothermal energy and biofuels and from all levels of biodiversity consequences, e.g., food webs, ecosystems, habitats, and ecosystem services. We further appreciate contributions on societal aspects of biodiversity stewardship and the energy transition.
CON14 Social Innovation and Collective Action in Socio-Ecological Systems for Transformative Change in Biodiversity Futures in Mountain Regions
CON | Session
Conveners: Mariana Melnykovych
Co-conveners: Carolina Adler; Ignacio Palomo; Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set a clear mission: halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature on a path to recovery. Achieving this requires more than ecological knowledge; it calls for transformative change and for futures where biodiversity is enhanced, not only conserved (IPBES 2019). Agriculture and forestry, as major drivers of biodiversity loss, present both urgent challenges and opportunities to combine mitigation of impacts with proactive conservation and restoration. This session examines how social innovation, participatory governance, and collective action can foster biodiversity recovery in agri-forest and mountain socio-ecological systems. It highlights how communities, researchers, policymakers, businesses, and civil society collaborate to design and implement transformative pathways. Living Labs, long-term socio-ecological research sites, and commons-based institutions are emphasized as arenas for co-production and experimentation, where knowledge exchange and inclusive participation strengthen resilience, equity, and trust. Special attention is given to improving communication, empowering communities, and enhancing the role of biodiversity science in policy and practice. We welcome contributions that: Explore governance innovations for biodiversity recovery; Present empirical cases of collective action in agriculture, forestry, and mountain landscapes; Analyse Living Lab approaches as infrastructures for transformative change; Reflect on cross-generational collaboration and integration of local, Indigenous, and scientific knowledge; Discuss scaling pathways and transfer of lessons, including in post-crisis contexts.
CON16 Understanding and caring for Arctic biodiversity together
CON | Session
Conveners: Jakob Assmann
Co-conveners: Mariana García Criado; Malou Johansen
Rapid climate change and increasing human activity (industry, tourism) are impacting Arctic biodiversity, putting the uniquely cold-adapted ecosystems of the region under threat. The consequences of changes to and losses in Arctic biodiversity have wide-reaching impacts themselves, from the subsistence of Indigenous and local livelihoods to global climate feedbacks. Looking into the future, we therefore need sustainable and lasting approaches that will enable Arctic biodiversity to adapt to these pressures. For this session, we invite submissions from all backgrounds that help us better understand and care for Arctic biodiversity and its future – locally, regionally and across the North. This includes submissions on marine and terrestrial biodiversity, Indigenous approaches, policy-making, social and natural sciences. We welcome abstracts providing perspectives from individual disciplines (for example, a research report or a story), as well as those that combine multiple ways of understanding the Arctic, including knowledge co-creation (for example, Two-Eyed Seeing) and interdisciplinary approaches. Talks may take any format in the allocated time slot (e.g., slides, storytelling, etc.) and we intend to close the session with a short discussion allowing for a group-based reflection. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
CON37 Art as an Icebreaker for Transformative Change: Reawakening Connections through Indigenous Philosophies and Worldviews
CON | Session
Conveners: Natascha Cerny Ehtesham
Co-conveners: Martha Cerny; Lewis Cardinal; David Faber
This session explores how art sparks transformative change by reconnecting people with nature, communities, and the spiritual world. Rooted in Indigenous philosophies and holistic worldviews – often misunderstood as separate from Western perspectives – our methods engage participants of all ages through interactive exhibitions, creative workshops, artist interviews, and storytelling. By reaching people emotionally, art makes complex ideas about biodiversity and environmental stewardship accessible and meaningful. These experiences invite reflection on the interconnectedness of all life – humans, animals, plants, and the ecosystems they inhabit – alongside the spiritual realm, fostering a relational understanding of the living world.
Art also acts as a bridge between Indigenous and other perspectives, creating a meeting place for dialogue, shared learning, and relationship-building. Centering Indigenous values of respect, reciprocity, and responsibility, the session highlights how Indigenous knowledge and ingenuity offer solutions to environmental and social challenges. Land-based education, intergenerational storytelling, and community initiatives guide transformative learning, public engagement, and creative problem-solving, inspiring just and sustainable futures.
The session features a visually rich presentation led by Indigenous knowledge holders, followed by discussion and exchange. Art’s transformative power spans multiple forms: it connects across cultures, communicates complex ideas, builds trust and collaboration, creates informal spaces for dialogue, and inspires education, advocacy, and action.
Convenors: One Arctic / Museum of Contemporary Circumpolar Art (MCCA) and Global Indigenous Dialogue (GID)