Global collaborations in support of mountain biodiversity science and policy
LCAB comfy seating, 2nd floor, Berrick Saul Building, Campus West, University of York (Map)
Event details
Today, scientific communities are increasingly large but also fragmented. The openness, transparency, and respect for plural perspectives, which serve as foundational principles for cooperation, are threatened and the mere legitimacy of science is questioned. These developments not only expose science to erosion but fundamentally undermine nations’ commitments to addressing the triple planetary crisis.
The Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) is one, among several research infrastructures and international networks, designed as safe spaces for knowledge co-creation across disciplines and regions. Its existence is rooted in a shared understanding that mountain ecosystem and biodiversity protection is indispensable for concomitantly achieving biodiversity, climate, and sustainable development goals globally.
Davnah Urbach, executive director GMBA, will present various ongoing efforts, which the GMBA pursues to facilitate, catalyze, and achieve integrative cross-border research in support of sustainable biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and management in the world’s mountains. These efforts range from the establishment of open access workflows and data infrastructures to a recently started community-led global assessment of mountain biodiversity.
About Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment
The GMBA is a global research network of Future Earth and an international research network within the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences. Since 2020, it provides a framework for supporting and fostering research on the conservation, management, and sustainable use of mountain biodiversity in a changing world and for facilitating the dialogue between communities of researchers, stakeholders, and policy-makers engaged on issues of mountain biodiversity and sustainable mountain development.
Its main goals are to:
- promote, harmonize, explore, and synthesize scientific research on current and future change in mountain biodiversity and in the provisioning of ecosystem services by mountain regions
- facilitate the access to and usage of research outcomes for scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders in charge of the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity in mountain regions
- provide a framework for bottom-up involvement of policy makers and stakeholders in research efforts
GMBA serves as primary interlocutor to the mountain community for matters pertaining to biodiversity and its role in supporting human well-being, ranging from the mechanisms and forces shaping biodiversity, to its monitoring, management, sustainable use, and conservation. GMBA further serves as an advisory body with regard to mountain biodiversity-related policy- and decision-making and liaises with the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).