IPBES (the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) is currently inviting volunteers, particularly from the Asia-Pacific region, to join or collaborate with the project team to organise the IPBES-4 Stakeholder Days. Interested individuals and organisations should contact the IPBES Secretariat by 2 October 2015 and 31 October 2015, respectively. Please refer to the official announcement below for details. 

Invitation to Stakeholder Days prior to the IPBES 4 Plenary

Stakeholder Days, open to all members, observers and stakeholders of IPBES, have been organized in advance of each previous plenary meeting as opportunities for a wide range of interested organizations to get updates on the IPBES process and to discuss their engagement in IPBES through informal exchange of views on specific aspects of the plenary meetings agendas. As outcomes of these meetings, positions on key issues related to stakeholder engagement have been jointly prepared.

In keeping with this practice, a two-day stakeholder meeting will be organised on 20 – 21 February 2016, prior to the IPBES 4th plenary (22-28 February 2016, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), at the venue of the Plenary (Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre). Please mark these Stakeholder Days in your calendar.

Convened by the IPBES secretariat, and co-facilitated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the International Council for Science (ICSU)/Future Earth, this meeting aims at:

1. Providing first-time IPBES Plenary participants with an opportunity to understand IPBES activities and the way IPBES works;
2. Discussing the engagement of stakeholders (IPBES Decision IPBES-3/4, p 98 to 110 of the IPBES-3 report), with a focus on the ways and means to implement the stakeholder engagement strategy to support the implementation of the IPBES work programme;
3. Exchanging views on the different topics on the agenda of IPBES-4, including an exchange of views with representatives of the IPBES Bureau and Multidisciplinary Expert Panel, and drawing out elements for a collective statement to be delivered at the opening of the session on behalf of interested observer organisations;

Stakeholders who have not yet registered to be observers to IPBES-4 may consider doing so before the registration deadline, 16 October 2015. After this date, no participation in the Plenary will be possible. Official registration to the stakeholder meeting itself will be done as we get closer to the meeting.

In order to fully adapt the format of the meeting to stakeholders’ expectations, the co-facilitators, IUCN and ICSU/Future Earth, are calling for 4-5 volunteers from the stakeholder community, to join the project team working in collaboration with IPBES to organise the IPBES-4 Stakeholder Days.

IPBES-4 Stakeholder Days project team will need to:

• Liaise with IPBES Secretariat with regards to the Stakeholder Days,
• Develop a task list and project timeline (based on existing recommendations from stakeholders of previous IPBES plenaries’ stakeholder days),
• Collect stakeholders’ proposals for the agenda of the stakeholder days,
• Promote the event to the Stakeholder Network, other stakeholders and their networks,
• Solicit in-kind support to secure hospitality not provided by IPBES,
• Ensure in-kind support to meeting facilitation, and
• Be available for online meetings at regular intervals.

Stakeholders interested in participating in the organisation of the IPBES-4 Stakeholder Days are welcome to express their interest in:

• Participating in the project team, by submitting a short motivation letter outlining skills to the [email protected] no later than 2 October 2015. Roles and responsibilities of the project team can be found here.
• Actively collaborating with the project team, and/or providing in-kind support. They can express their interest and their intended support by submitting a short one-paragraph proposal to [email protected] no later than October 31, 2015. Various forms of in-kind support for stakeholders can be found here.

Stakeholders from the Asia-Pacific region are especially encouraged to become engaged in the organisation of these Stakeholders’ Days.