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This talk will build on findings from recent assessments of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and other platforms to explore the transformations needed, and linkages across sectors and countries, to respond to multiplying disruptions across the globe. David Obura will present some provocations to explore the underlying causes of challenges to sustainability today, and emerging perspectives to build new solutions for the multiple intersecting crises across nature, economy, society and governance.

Biodiversity and ecosystem services underpin human economies and societies. Their continuing loss, climatic changes and social and economic disruptions present unprecedented challenges connected from local to global levels. These crises can be seen as one of a set of pathways enabled by the global order maintained for the last 80 years. Are we close to an end-point of this pathway, characterized by intersecting and growing cracks across multiple axes in nature, economy and society, multiple potential tipping points of regional to global significance, and disruption of the global rules-based order itself? If this is an ending, what positive transformations can be seeded? What are plausible resets to the global rules given conditions today?

Global science-policy platforms provide increasingly clear and consistent findings, pointing towards new and differentiated responsibilities and actions required of different countries and actors. Acknowledging that biodiversity and ecosystem services are the foundations of human life, one set of pathways identifies avenues for balancing the relationships between nature, economy and society. In it, underlying drivers are addressed, enabling building a stable order that is ‘safe and just’ for all people, and minimizes biodiversity loss and earth system changes. Foundations for this exist in our current multilateral and governance systems, but deep transformations in priorities for conservation, economic/financial sectors and social outcomes will be needed to shift current trajectories towards balance and sustainability.

David’s primary research has been on coral reef resilience, biogeography and climate change impacts. He is turning now towards sustainability science pivoting around nature-climate interactions and their relevance in broader economic and societal domains, and exploring the scientific basis underpinning just transitions and transformations. His current research and policy engagement seeks to foster collective action to promote sustainability across all scales, to strengthen the broader sustainable development paradigm. David was awarded Kenya’s national honour, Moran of the Burning Spear in December 2021, and the Coral Reef Conservation Award of the International Coral Reef Society in 2022.

'Biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainability: is it time for a reset?' with David Obura