The independent platform will in many ways mirror the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has assisted in catalyzing worldwide understanding and governmental action on global warming. IPBES will bridge the gulf between the wealth of scientific knowledge on the accelerating declines and degradation of the natural world, with knowledge on effective solutions and decisive government action required to reverse these damaging trends.

Its various roles will include carrying out high-quality peer reviews of the wealth of science on biodiversity and ecosystem services emerging from research institutes across the globe in order to provide gold standard reports to governments.

These reports will not only cover the state, status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystems, but will also outline transformational policy options and responses to bring about real change in their fortunes.

The IPBES will achieve this in part by prioritizing, making sense of and bringing consistency to the great variety of reports and assessments conducted by United Nations bodies, research centres, universities and others as they relate to biodiversity and ecosystem services.

"IPBES represents a major breakthrough in terms of organizing a global response to the loss of living organisms and forests, freshwaters, coral reefs and other ecosystems that underpin all life-including economic life-on Earth," Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director said.

Mr. Steiner said the sign-off by the UNGA came in the wake of the successes at the meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity that took place in Nagoya, Japan, in October. Here governments adopted a new strategic plan including targets for addressing biodiversity loss to be met by 2020. Nagoya also delivered a sea change in the global understanding of the multi-trillion dollar importance of biodiversity and forests, freshwaters and other ecosystems to the global economy and to national economies, and in particular for the "GDP of the poor".

The case has been built via The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), an initiative hosted by UNEP, requested by G-8 environment ministers as well as developing country ones and supported by the European Commission and governments including Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Mr. Steiner said the formal go-ahead for an IPBES meant much of what had been possible in 2010 had been transformed into a reality. He said the UNGA backing now triggered a series of steps needed to get the work of the new body up and running.

UNEP, as the interim Secretariat, will now organize a plenary or meeting of governments in 2011 to decide on issues such as which country will house the independent IPBES and which institutions will host it alongside other institutional arrangements.