A Decade of IPBES Reveals the Science Biodiversity Action Still Lacks

After twelve years at the helm of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Anne Larigauderie has issued a candid assessment of where biodiversity science stands and where it must go next. Writing in the inaugural issue of PLOS Ecosystems, the outgoing Executive Secretary argues that the world’s most comprehensive biodiversity assessment process has matured from documenting the scale of nature’s decline to something far more ambitious: identifying the scientific priorities needed to actually reverse it. Her verdict, distilled from a decade of landmark assessments, is that the field must now embrace systems thinking, the science of transformative change, and a deeper engagement with business and finance if the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is to be delivered.

The timing of her reflection is deliberate. The seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is currently reviewing collective progress toward the framework’s 2030 goals, and the uncomfortable question hanging over those negotiations is whether current efforts are remotely sufficient. Larigauderie’s answer is that the bottleneck is no longer simply a shortage of data about species decline. Since the landmark 2019 Global Assessment, IPBES has produced the Nexus Assessment, the Transformative Change Assessment and the Business and Biodiversity Assessment, and together these documents trace an intellectual evolution: from cataloguing drivers of loss to understanding the interconnected systems, societal transformations and economic shifts that determine whether policy ambition becomes reality.

The first of her three priorities concerns what she calls the shift from sectors to systems. One of the central messages of the Nexus Assessment is that biodiversity can no longer be understood, or governed, in isolation from food, water, health and climate. These are interconnected components of complex social-ecological systems in which decisions made in one domain generate consequences, both intended and unintended, in the others. The technical examples are sobering. Large-scale tree planting, a flagship strategy for climate mitigation, can support carbon targets yet, if poorly designed, replace species-rich ecosystems with monoculture plantations that undermine biodiversity outright. Comparable trade-offs arise between food production, water management and ecosystem conservation, meaning that policies optimized for a single objective frequently erode others.

Translating that insight into usable science demands better integrated modelling, Larigauderie argues: approaches capable of representing interactions across sectors and identifying trade-offs and synergies before policy choices are locked in. But she is explicit that the challenge extends well beyond modelling. The Nexus Assessment also highlights the need to understand governance across sectors, the conditions under which actors cooperate, and how diverse knowledge systems and values can genuinely inform decision-making. Questions of participation, equity and whose voices are heard, she writes, are decisive in determining whether policies are legitimate and durable. Answering them requires close collaboration between ecologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists and public health researchers, a disciplinary span that few research institutions are currently structured to support.

The second priority is what she terms the science of transformative change. With the Transformative Change Assessment, IPBES has assembled compelling evidence that fundamental change is both necessary and possible, and its key contribution is diagnostic: transformative change requires addressing the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss, including the growing disconnection of societies from nature, the concentration of power and wealth, and the dominance of short-term individual and material priorities in public and private decision-making. These underlying drivers, the assessment contends, shape the institutions, incentives and values that ultimately determine biodiversity outcomes, which is why incremental environmental policy so often fails to bend the curve.

The scientific challenge, as Larigauderie frames it, lies in understanding how these drivers interact, why transformative pathways succeed in some contexts but not others, and how they can be sustained over time. The assessment draws on hundreds of examples from around the world and identifies recurring characteristics of successful transformations, yet it also exposes conspicuous gaps in knowledge. Researchers still know little about how governance coalitions emerge, how economic incentives interact with shifting social norms, or how institutions learn from failure. Closing those gaps, she argues, will require comparative research across countries and cultures, underpinned by far stronger collaboration between natural and social scientists than the field has historically achieved.

The third priority is the one most likely to unsettle traditional conservation circles: business. The Business and Biodiversity Assessment makes what Larigauderie calls a fundamental point, that every business depends on and impacts biodiversity, and therefore has the potential to become a positive agent of change. Biodiversity loss, in this framing, is not merely an environmental concern but an emerging systemic risk for companies, financial institutions and entire economies, which elevates it from a corporate-responsibility topic to a strategic priority essential for long-term resilience. That reframing carries real weight at a moment when central banks and regulators are beginning to treat nature-related risk with the seriousness once reserved for climate.

The technical agenda that follows is demanding. Developing robust methods to assess biodiversity impacts and dependencies across value chains is a major priority, but Larigauderie insists that measurement alone is not enough. Scientists also need a better understanding of how biodiversity-related risks propagate through financial systems, how investment decisions shape biodiversity outcomes, and how financial flows can be redirected toward nature-positive development. That includes working out how climate finance and agricultural investment can be aligned with biodiversity objectives rather than working at cross-purposes to them. Perhaps the greatest challenge, she writes, is not simply improving how biodiversity is measured, but developing the evidence and tools that make biodiversity a routine consideration in business strategy, capital allocation and financial decision-making, an opportunity she sees for collaboration between ecologists, economists, finance specialists and management scholars.

Taken together, the three assessments point to a coherent research programme for the coming decade: systems approaches that capture interactions across sectors and scales; a stronger science of transformative change that explains how institutions, incentives and values interact to shape societal change; and the evidence and methods needed to embed biodiversity within business, finance and investment decisions. None of these priorities fits neatly within existing disciplinary silos, which is precisely the point. The biodiversity crisis, on this reading, is not primarily a problem of ecological ignorance but of governance, economics and values, and the science needed to address it must be built accordingly.

Looking back on her twelve years leading the platform, Larigauderie expresses pride in the community IPBES has helped build: thousands of experts spanning disciplines, cultures and knowledge systems, working across boundaries that once separated institutions and fields. That community, she notes, depends on universities, research institutes, scientific societies and journals that provide space for new ideas, and she argues that a venue like PLOS Ecosystems can strengthen exactly the interdisciplinary capacity the assessments show is needed. Her parting message to researchers is blunt in its optimism: the science published today will become the evidence assessed tomorrow, and the scientists who produce it are not spectators to the biodiversity negotiations but participants in a shared endeavour to give decision makers the tools they need to accelerate action for nature and people.

Subject of Research: Scientific priorities for biodiversity action identified from a decade of IPBES assessments

Article Title: What science does biodiversity action still need? Lessons from a decade of IPBES

Article References: Larigauderie, A. (2026). What science does biodiversity action still need? Lessons from a decade of IPBES. PLOS Ecosystems, 1(1), e0000027. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pesy.0000027

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pesy.0000027

Keywords: IPBES, biodiversity, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, transformative change, nexus assessment, business and biodiversity, social-ecological systems, conservation policy, sustainable finance, interdisciplinary research, Convention on Biological Diversity, ecosystem services