On Wednesday, November 26, 2025, at UNESCO in Paris, France welcomed over 100 leading global scientists as they embarked on the start of a vital new and authoritative multi-year assessment of the state of knowledge about global biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.
The French Minister Delegate for Francophonie, International Partnerships and French Nationals Abroad, Eléonore Caroit, addressed the opening session of the first author meeting of the second global assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Minister Caroit reaffirmed France’s unwavering commitment to free, rigorous, independent science, as an essential component of the international efforts to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change, especially “at a time when science is under attack and is confronted with disinformation campaigns that undermine climate and environmental action”.
In 2019, the first IPBES Global Assessment alerted the world to the fact that 1 million species of plants and animals are already at risk of extinction, and ranked, for the first time ever, the direct drivers of biodiversity loss, setting a very high bar as one of the most impactful environmental reports ever launched.
IPBES Executive Secretary, Dr. Luthando Dziba, noted “how special this venue is because, in 2019, the IPBES Plenary approved the first Global Assessment here at UNESCO in Paris. That report was groundbreaking in both its reach and impact. It was welcomed by French President Macron at the Élysée Palace on the day it was launched and used that same week to help inform undertakings by the G7 under the French Presidency. The Report went on to underpin the targets set by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, among its many outstanding achievements.”
Minister Caroit thanked IPBES and its expert authors for the major role of IPBES in producing knowledge essential for public decision-making and reiterated that France will continue to actively support the Platform and its scientific community.
Expected to be published in 2028, in time to inform the global stocktaking on the 2030 deadlines of the Sustainable Development Goals, Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement on climate change, and to inform the post-2030 global biodiversity framework, the 2nd IPBES Global Assessment is now underway, with 117 world-leading experts from around the world as authors.
The assessment will assess progress towards the Global Goals and address critical gaps in the first Global Assessment, as well as emerging issues. These gaps and issues, for example, include the need for more comprehensive attention to oceans, and issues related to Indigenous Peoples and local communities will be comprehensively addressed, including multiple worldviews and values.
It will also consider somewhat neglected components of biodiversity and relevant social issues. The second global assessment will assess the different challenges, lessons learned and potential solutions within and among regions in a scientific and balanced manner.
IPBES Chair, Dr. David Obura, concluded: “This assessment brings together experts across the sciences and Indigenous and local knowledge systems, in an ambitious design to help governments and other stakeholders take stock on progress towards goals for 2030 and to shape the post-2030 global agendas on biodiversity and sustainability, to progress the global vision of living in harmony with nature.”