The meeting started with some uncertainties concerning its legal status. It was not clear whether the UN General Assembly in its resolution 65/162 from December 2010 had already established IPBES or whether this body remained to be established – and how. Legal advice from UNEP in Nairobi and the UN Office for Legal Affairs in New York contradicted each other as did the legal opinion of the Member States. It was important to recognize, however, that these legal uncertainties did not represent a major controversy issue. Or, as one delegate put it, “it’s a political, not a legal issue”. And in political terms participants of the Nairobi meeting all agreed that it was a matter of urgency to fully operationalise the new platform. Thus, legal uncertainty did not significantly slow down the necessary discussions about function, structure, modalities and rules of procedure of IPBES and the meeting made some progress in narrowing down the possible options for subsidiary bodies and working groups.

The main challenge in Nairobi was a “chicken and egg” problem: should the discussions start with the work programme first agreeing on the functions of this new body, and then consider its structure; or should we start with structures and subsidiary bodies and then consider the work programme? As the plenary chose the second option, progress on structural and organisational issues were impacted by the missing agreement on the work programme (and thus resulted in square brackets). Nevertheless, discussions helped make significant progress from the basic agreement made at the third and final preparatory meeting in Busan, Korea, in June 2010. While the ‘Busan Outcome’ remains the basis of the whole process, it is vague and very basic in its specifications and thus needs further clarification.

Concerning the potential options for subsidiary bodies, the Nairobi meeting agreed on two options, the basic difference between them being whether there is a need, besides an administrative secretariat, for a larger science panel. Concerning the working groups, three options were identified:

• Option 1 consists of two working groups, one on assessments and one for the three other work areas: capacity building, knowledge generation and policy support.
• Option 2 consists of one working group on capacity building and one for the other three work areas, including assessments. Here again the interests of developing countries (which emphasised the need for capacity building) and developed countries (which emphasised regular assessments) were apparent.
• There is now a third option on the table, which favours regional structures in which all four work areas would be interlinked on a regional basis.

Further progress on this issue depends on clarification of the work programme itself. In this regard, a common basic understanding seems to emerge that the IPBES, unlike the IPCC, is not only about carrying out assessments but has to meet a broader approach to science-policy interfaces including capacity building and policy support. Thus, decisive for further negotiations and the final success or failure of IPBES are further discussions on how to define this work programme – and how to link the four work areas together - thereby improving the policy relevance of the new body. Concerning the legal uncertainty mentioned earlier, a two-step approach is targeted: there is at least the possibility that the plenary in its second session (in early April) will establish itself as an intergovernmental body and then ask the UN General Assembly or another UN body to become adopted as a member of the UN system, which is seen as important for the legitimacy of the new body. As one delegate put it “it is crucial for the new body to avoid the fate of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”.
 

Christoph Görg/UFZ