As part of the open, transparent and collaborative process in the development of IPBES assessment reports, the external First Order Draft review by experts of the IPBES thematic assessment on land degradation and restoration (Deliverable 3bi) and of the four regional assessments (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Americas, and Europe and Central Asia) on biodiversity and ecosystem services (Deliverable 2b) will run for six weeks from 30 May 2016 until 11 July 2016.

The IPBES secretariat is inviting all expert reviewers with relevant knowledge and/or experience to register to review one or more chapters of one or more assessments. Interested reviewers are requested to fill the registration form available here: http://www.ipbes.net/registration-review-first-order-drafts-ipbes-assessments. Please note that access to this form requires you to log in as a user on the IPBES website and register for a new user account if you do not have one yet.

Once your registration has successfully been received, the IPBES secretariat will review it and grant you access to the draft chapters located at http://www.ipbes.net/fod-assessments within 48hrs. The first order draft is confidential. One of the conditions of being an expert reviewer, to which you have to agree upon registration, is that the drafts cannot be cited, quoted or circulated.

Please submit your review comments by 11 July 2016. Comments for respective regional or land degradation and restoration assessments should be provided through dedicated templates called ‘Review comments templates” which are provided with the draft chapters. Please email review comments to the respective IPBES technical support units for the assessments:

• Land degradation and restoration assessment: [email protected]
• Africa assessment: [email protected]
• Asia Pacific assessment: [email protected]
• Americas assessment: [email protected]
• ECA assessment: [email protected] and [email protected]

Comments will only be accepted if they are properly inserted into the given template. Expert reviewers are requested to fill in each required field in the review template (reviewer name, chapter that is being reviewed, the start and end page and line on which the comments are being provided, and the comment itself).  All names of expert reviewers who provide comments will be published on the IPBES website and acknowledged in the Annex of the respective report.