What’s in the News?

• The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has released the summaries of the “Nexus Assessment” and “Transformative Change Assessment” Report.
• The final reports are expected later in 2025. 

Nexus Assessment Report

• The report, for the first time, identifies and evaluates five nexus elements— biodiversity, water, food, health and climate—and provides solutions and policy options to optimise co-benefits across different environmental crises.
• It provides more than 70 ways to deal with biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change together.
• The report indicates that a focus on only one part of the nexus in isolation can result in negative outcomes for the other nexus elements.

Transformative Change Assessment Report

• The “Transformative Change Assessment” report is a thematic assessment of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, determinants of transformative change and options for achieving the 2050 vision for biodiversity which seeks to “live in harmony with nature”. 
• The reports provide the science and evidence needed to achieve not only the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework target of reversing and halting biodiversity loss by 2030, but also the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement that seeks to keep average global temperature rise to 1.5˚C from pre-industrialisation levels.
• It identifies the underlying causes of biodiversity loss identified as the disconnection of people from nature; domination over nature and other people; inequitable concentration of power and wealth; and the prioritisation of short-term individual and material gains.