How Indigenous Peoples and local communities can have a greater say in global biodiversity assessments

The study acknowledges that IPBES is arguably the frontrunner in working across diverse knowledge systems, noting that a productive shift is underway in how the panel works, but argues that more ambitious change is needed.

"We need to work across scientific, Indigenous and local knowledge systems to understand the complexities of biodiversity loss. It requires diverse perspectives to prevent the narrowing of alternatives and enable transformative change towards a just and sustainable world," says Centre researcher Maria Tengö, lead author of the study.

Published in the journal People and Nature, the study brought together an international team of scientists and Indigenous and local knowledge holders from Australia, Sweden, Germany, Hawai'i, Spain, the Philippines, and Thailand.

The authors identified that the synthesis stage, when rich information is distilled into key messages for decision making, is often where the diversity of knowledge is lost or hidden. To address this, they set out to "unpack the task of synthesis when weaving different knowledge systems together” in biodiversity assessments and conservation.

A challenging task

To synthesise knowledge from different actors is indeed a challenging task, they write, involving knowledge conflicts, tensions between diversity and consensus, as well as political and power dynamics. Yet little guidance exists in the scientific literature about how to navigate these challenges. The authors address this with a literature review and reflections among the co-author team based on their participation in three assessments for IPBES.

“We synthesise practical steps for IPBES and highlight key areas for action to more broadly stimulate evidence synthesis as a means of transformative change,” they write.

This includes working with diverse actors to address power imbalances; building governance structures that embed justice, rights, and attention to healing historical trauma; and creating spaces for genuine contestation of ideas. Developing shared capacities for reflection and learning is key to navigating disagreement productively. So too is promoting Indigenous and local leadership, funding opportunities for communities to practice and apply their own knowledge, and recognising that different knowledge systems may relate to time in fundamentally different ways.

Multiple Evidence Base

The study builds on the Multiple Evidence Base (MEB) approach for knowledge co-production developed alongside IPBES. The MEB approach identifies five key tasks in bringing different knowledge systems together based on equity and usefulness for all actors involved (mobilising, translating, negotiating, synthesising, and applying knowledge) and places diverse actors, their institutions, and collaborative processes at the centre.

Using this framework, the authors examine the roles of different actors and institutions, and draw on a so called "dissonance perspective" to address the political dimensions of working across knowledge systems.

Their conclusion is clear: implementing this guidance will help knowledge co-production efforts drive genuinely transformative change, not just incremental steps. This matters because any science-policy process that aims for deep, lasting change will inevitably encounter competing narratives and opposing viewpoints. Navigating these tensions fairly across different ways of knowing, is what socially just synthesis requires.

With that in mind, the authors are confident their analysis holds value well beyond IPBES itself:

“Our analysis provides explicit and ambitious guidance for changes in IPBES for an effective forward path – very timely for the second Global assessment that has just started. If broadly implemented, these steps would represent significant systemic change within IPBES, with high relevance for other science-policy-practice platforms at local, regional and global level.”