The intergovernmental platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES) – a role for heritage?

Following establishment in 2011, the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has begun to produce outputs. The initial development of a conceptual framework was an important step in the platform’s development. That conceptual framework identified nature, its benefits to people, the contribution to a good quality of life of those benefits, and drivers of change, as the key areas of work for the Platform. While heritage is not specifically mentioned in the framework, it is by implication. And several of the papers dealing with elements of the programme of work for IPBES, as well as the first Assessment (accepted by the Platform at its meeting in 2016), have explicit mention of heritage and heritage activities. Helping elucidate and contribute to the range of knowledges within the IPBES conceptual framework is an important role for heritage professionals, who can play a key role ensuring heritage issues are appropriately and accurately portrayed in IPBES outputs. In turn, as those outputs produce outcomes they will have lessons for future natural and cultural heritage practice and communication. It is timely, therefore, for heritage professionals to explore ways of interacting with IPBES and its work programme.