GEO BON OPEN SCIENCE CONFERENCE & ALL HANDS MEETING 2020 06–10 July 2020, 100 % VIRTUAL Book of Abstracts Keynote 1 IPBES: Science and evidence for biodiversity policy and action Anne Larigauderie Executive Secretary of IPBES This talk will start by a presentation of the achievements of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity (IPBES) during its first work programme, starting with the release of its first assessment, on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production in 2016, and culminating with the release of the first IPBES Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in 2019. The talk will highlights some of the findings of the IPBES Global Assessment, including trends in the contributions of nature to people over the past 50 years, direct and indirect causes of biodiversity loss, and progress against the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and some of the Sustainable Development Goals, ending with options for action. The talk will then briefly present the new IPBES work programme up to 2030, and its three new topics, and end with considerations regarding GEO BON, and the need to establish an operational global observing system for biodiversity to support the implementation of the post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. 1 Keynote 2 Securing Critical Natural Capital: Science and Policy Frontiers for Essential Ecosystem Service Variables Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer Stanford University, USA As governments, business, and lending institutions are increasingly considering investments in natural capital as one strategy to meet their operational and development goals sustainably, the importance of accurate, accessible information on ecosystem services has never been greater. However, many ecosystem services are highly localized, requiring high-resolution and contextually specific information—which has hindered the delivery of this information at the pace and scale at which it is needed. To meet the demand for global, standardized data on ecosystem services, while still retaining representation of their fine-scale socio-ecological processes, a new approach is warranted. Integrating the Essential Biodiversity Variables into ecosystem service modeling and the evolving framework for Essential Ecosystem Service Variables provides a path forward. With satellites scanning every meter of the planet every few days, a rich array of social media delineating human behavior and activity, and high-speed computing capable of metabolizing terabytes of data in minutes, we are poised to harness the information age to advance the reliability, relevance, and readiness of ecosystem service data. 2 Essential biodiversity and ecosystem service variables for the ocean William W. L. Cheung Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, The University of British Columbia Marine ecosystems have been impacted by human activities, including overfishing, habitat destruction, climate change and pollution. These impacts are altering ecosystem functions, goods and services deemed vital to human communities. There are urgent calls, such as through the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, for engaging in societal pathways that will lead us to ‘positive’ futures in which these ocean challenges can be met. Development of such pathways require knowledge about the past and current capacity of the ocean to support biodiversity, maintain ecosystem functions and services, as well as projections of how such capacity would be altered under scenarios of global changes. Here, using fisheries as an example, I illustrate how a candidate set of essential biodiversity and ecosystem service variables for the ocean, with global coverages, can be used to track past changes and explore the consequences of climate and societal changes. These candidate sets of essential variables for the ocean have also been applied to project the futures of fisheries-related ecosystem functions and services using integrated ocean models under scenarios of global change and policy options. These examples highlight the importance and utilities of developing interconnected essential biodiversity and ecosystem services variables that are harmonized across the ocean. They also underscore the need to build data and modelling infrastructure to facilitate the use of these variables in exploring sustainable ocean development pathways. 3 Keynote – EBV & EESV Development What monitoring invasive species has taught us about governing biodiversity knowledge Melodie A. McGeoch Monash University / Australia Biodiversity governance is what holds the relevant actions, research, expertise, policy and institutions together as we work towards a common goal. GEO BON and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) have played a significant role over the last decade developing the concepts, tools and networks to span the boundaries of otherwise sometimes disconnected thinking and activity on biodiversity and how best to govern it. As a test case, monitoring biological invasions has posed opportunities and challenges to implementing GEO BON’s vision to improve the quality, quantity and usefulness of biodiversity data. From a biodiversity perspective, biological invasions are a theoretically well-understood, species populations problem and one with substantial policy traction. Nonetheless, the many hurdles encountered in the process of implementing EBVs for invasion monitoring may provide more general insights on the work needed to support the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework. I’ll provide an overview of progress on invasion monitoring for the purpose of national and global reporting, examine what some of the more general emergent messages might be, and how these could guide the tasks for GEO BON in the coming decade. 4 The InSiGHTS framework for modelling species’ Area of Habitat Carlo Rondinini Sapienza University / Italy InSiGHTS (Integrated Scenarios of Global Habitat for Terrestrial Species) is a modelling framework that enables the estimation, monitoring and projection of species’ Area of Habitat (AOH), i.e., the habitat available to a species within its range. InSiGHTS combines three components: (1) a climate- envelope model, used for projecting climatically suitable space; (2) assumptions on species’ response to climate change, used to infer potential range gains and losses following changes in climate suitability; and (3) a habitat suitability model to estimate the AOH. All three components of the framework are flexible in terms of data input and processing. InSiGHTS has been applied in a variety of contexts to assess the indirect effects of alternative pathways of socio-economic development, exerted through changes in climate and land use, on mammal habitat, populations and extinction risk. Based on InSiGHTS projections, known sustainability pathways reduce impacts on mammal diversity, but are insufficient to halt declines. 5 Panel discussion on BON Development The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network – the thematic BON for coral reefs David Obura CORDIO East Africa and GCRMN Regional coordinator for the Western Indian Ocean Four years from the last GEOBON Open Science Conference in 2016, conditions for coral reefs have worsened, with the 3rd global bleaching event spanning three years from 2015-2017 touching almost all coral reef regions around the world. 2020 was anticipated as a ‘bumper policy year’ for the biodiversity and climate nexus, but the global attention has been diverted by another global nexus crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic. With this as a backdrop, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) adopted a new Implementation and Governance Plan in January 2019, incorporating standards and principles from the Essential Biodiversity and Ocean Variable (EBV/EOV) frameworks. The principal task of the GCRMN in 2020 is to produce the first global update of coral reef status since 2008. The GCRMN community contributed 195 datasets from 75 countries. These datasets included more than 1,7500,000 observations of 23 different variables recorded from more than 100,000 transects. Long-term time series data (>15 years) were provided from almost 700 different sites around the world. The report will be produced in the second half of 2020. With both climate and biodiversity Conferences of Parties delayed to 2021, the timing of the report will be perfect to strengthen global commitments to stay within the safe climate boundary of 1.5-2 C and to adopt strong goals and targets of the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) for 2021-2030 to achieve no net loss of biodiversity. In this regard, the GCRMN’s parent body, the International Coral Reef Initiative, submitted recommendations to the Open Ended Working Group on the GBF, including recommended metrics for coral reefs in the indicator framework of the GBF for monitoring target and goal attainment. A number of additional threads are in motion relevant to establishing the GCRMN as a thematic BON or OOS, including: • strengthening protocols, standards and data platforms, as well as of metadata and data sharing agreements, to facilitate aggregation, sharing and multiplying the use of data from a global, or set of coherent regional, datasets; • establishing formal procedures for contribution of GCRMN data into the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership and related platforms for international reporting on biodiversity policies, as well as for global standard reporting indices such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and the Red List of Ecosystems; • establishing regional processes to address data contributor and networking needs,