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IPBES ICT guide

Data and Knowledge Management

Policy

Download the latest version of the IPBES data management policy on https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3551078

Objectives

The data and knowledge management policy serves to ensure that data and knowledge is managed correctly and consistently throughout IPBES, and is maintained to the highest possible standard. Specific objectives include the following:

To ensure that data and knowledge produced during IPBES research activities, within assessments as well as assessment overarching, follow the FAIR and CARE principles;
To ensure inclusivity and benefit sharing at all stages of the creation and distribution of IPBES products as well as access of all involved stakeholders and producers to the final IPBES products;
To provide a framework for all IPBES entities, including technical support units and experts, to fulfil their responsibilities with respect to management, handling, preservation, and distribution of data and knowledge and generated data within the platform;

Principles

Open science: promotes the generation of knowledge through collaboration based on free and open access to knowledge, information, and data
- Accessibility: the free and open access to its deliverables and to the material on which they are based
- Inclusivity and benefit sharing: the co-operation in research and acceptance of the resulting products

Highlights

Includes the full incorporation of indigenous and local knowledge throughout the policy
Includes the requirement that IPBES products follow the FAIR and CARE principles
Details specific provisions on reporting as well as accessibility, inclusivity, and benefit sharing

Contact

For any questions or comments, please contact the technical support unit on knowledge and data at

Organisation of Work

These technical guidelines have been prepared by the technical support unit on knowledge and data and reviewed by the task force on knowledge and data within IPBES.

Version: 1.0 DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10004399

The Organisation of Work, consists of three separate parts:

A - File Naming Convention,
and

These guidelines are intended to support the technical support units for the assessments, the other technical support units within IPBES and the assessment experts. Adopting these practices will increase the consistency and coherence within IPBES, and will facilitate the use of IPBES products for internal and external users.

All source files are also available on our . For any questions, feedback, or suggestions for future guidelines, contact .

Technical Guideline Series

These technical guidelines on data management, handling, and delivery have been prepared by the technical support unit on knowledge and data and reviewed by the task force on knowledge and data.

Part 10 - Contributing Authors Template Email considering ILK

Technical Guideline Series

Prepared by Joy Kumagai and Peter Bates Reviewed by Aidin Niamir, the Task Force on Knowledge and Data and the Task Force on Indigenous and Local Knowledge

For any inquires please contact [email protected] and [email protected]

Version: 1.0 Last Updated: 18 July 2022

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6655926

This technical guideline is a template invitation email for contributing authors to IPBES assessments, which covers aspects relating to ILK and the data and knowledge management policy. The guideline is intended for assessment technical support units.

Contributing Authors Template Email considering ILK and the data and knowledge management policy

This formal email could be sent after initial more informal contact is made, as appropriate.

Dear [contributing author name],

It is my pleasure to invite you to be a Contributing Author for the assessment of [assessment name], that is being developed by the . Specifically, you are invited to contribute to Chapter [#] on [Chapter title]. Your contribution would focus on the section on [topic], and you would be working with [IPBES authors names], who are [Lead Author(s)/Coordinating Lead Author(s)] of the assessment and copied on this email.

The assessment of [assessment name] began in [year] and will run until [year]. It is being developed based on the attached scoping document approved by the IPBES Plenary.

As a contributing author, you would be linked directly to authors of the assessment and would be requested to provide specific contributions around themes, topics or geographic areas, as discussed with [author name]. Contributing Authors do not however have access to drafts of the full chapter due to IPBES rules on confidentiality of assessment drafts.

Contributions by contributing authors are always highly valuable and gratefully received, and support the development of key themes in an assessment chapter. However, we cannot guarantee that contributions will be reproduced in their entirety in the assessment. They may be edited during rounds of drafting and external review processes so that they form a part of a coherent chapter. Also, depending on space and chapter structures, the chapter may eventually use a synthesised version of your contribution. However, your full contribution may be made publicly available in a data management report or in supplementary materials that are available online as companion resources to the assessment.

If you choose to share any previously unpublished Indigenous and local knowledge or materials, you will be asked to confirm that you are authorised to share this information and confirm that it is non-confidential as specified in our guidance on documenting Indigenous and local knowledge ().

To enable open science and accessibility within IPBES, the Platform has a data and knowledge management policy available at .

Contributing authors are acknowledged on the first page of the Chapter to which they have contributed, but they are not listed as authors or within the citation of the chapter and assessment.

Finally, further communications guiding your contributions will be made directly by [author name]. However, if you have any further questions feel free to contact me at [email].

We thank you for considering this invitation to contribute to this assessment, and we look forward to your valuable input.

[Signature]

Citations of IPBES Assessments

Prepared by the technical support unit of knowledge and data

For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 6.0 Last Updated: October 6th 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5783347

This is a resource for everyone to cite previous IPBES assessments starting with the IPBES Global Assessment. BibTeX and RIS files are available to download beneath each citation. Assessments approved at each future Plenary session will be added to the list. Suggested citations are created by the assessments.

Business and Biodiversity Assessment

Full report

Methodological assessment of the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17185116

IPBES (2026). Methodological assessment of the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17185116

Download the . Download the .

Summary for Policymakers

Summary for policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People DOI:

IPBES (2026). Summary for policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People. Jones M., Polasky S., Rueda X., Brooks S., Carter Ingram J., Egoh B. N., von Hase A., Kohsaka R., Kulak M., Leach K., Loyola R., Mandle L., Rodriguez-Osuna V., Schaafsma M. and Sonter L. J. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Setting the scene DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17074175

Rodriguez Osuna, V., Ingram J.C., Budiani I., de Jesus E., Inostroza L., Kalumanga Ngallaba E., Perram A., Schultz L., Shimshack J., Teren G., Ayambire R., Priyadarshini P. (2026). Chapter 1: Setting the scene. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: How does business depend on biodiversity? DOI:

Egoh B.N., Schaafsma M., Duan H., Hochard J., Joo W., López Cubillos S., Paspaldzhiev I., Prodanova H., Willemen L., Koh N.S., Lankia T., Vargas O. (2026). Chapter 2: How does business depend on biodiversity? In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 3

Chapter 3: How does business impact biodiversity? DOI:

Mandle L., Koshaka R., Bull J., Crona B., Johnson M.A., Oguge N.O., Panwar R., Romero C., Ávila Ortega D.I., Chelangat S. Chetty K., Vargas O. (2026). Chapter 3: How does business impact biodiversity?. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Approaches for measurement of business dependencies and impacts on biodiversity DOI:

Brooks S., Kulak M., Feger C., Lee H., van Oorschot M., Pavani B.F., Pfister S., Verones F., Zanetti E.A., Bedford J., Nemecek D., Vera Paz A. (2026). Chapter 4: Approaches for measurement of business dependencies and impacts on biodiversity. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Businesses as key actors in transformative change: options for action DOI:

von Hase A., Sonter L.J., Nguyen T., Adam J., Dickinson S., Enrici M-H., Fabregas T., Howard P., Hummel Wicher N.L., Husain H.J., Lasmana F.P., Narain D., Vera Paz A., Tarasova-Krasiieva, O., Vargas, O. (2026). Chapter 5: Businesses as key actors in transformative change: options for action. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Creating an enabling environment for business: options for action by governments, the financial sector, Indigenous people and local communities and civil society DOI:

Leach K., Loyola R., Chatwin A., Leenders C., Mukumbuta Guillemin I., Park M.S., Syed Hazari S.M., Yiu E. Prodani K., Rabeschini G., Vera Paz A. (2026). Chapter 6: Creating an enabling environment for business: options for action by governments, the financial sector, Indigenous people and local communities and civil society. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Transformative Change Assessment

Full report

Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2024). Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Assessment Directories

These assessment directories have been propared by the technical support unit for data, and reviewed by the task force on knowledge and data and the technical support unit for invasive alien species.

Underlying bibliographic data and research materials of the IPBES assessment reports

IPBES Ontology and Linked Open Data

Further Guidance

Software

Zotero

IPBES adopted Zotero as its reference manager: it is free to use, it allows large groups to work together, and an intuitive plugin in Microsoft Word allows for easy linkage of the references in documents.

References can be added to Zotero using the magic wand, using various identifiers, such as doi, ISBN, PubMed ids (PMIDs) or arXiv ids, or manually (using the ‘add file’ symbol on the left of the magic wand).

The dropdown menu shows the different options of documents that can be added, except for ‘website’. When adding a website, choose any other option, and change it to website when entering the other information (it is the very last option in the drop down menu). Add as much metadata as possible, and make sure that an identifier is added (such as a url, as for references with a doi or isbn, it is advised to use the magic wand, so that all metadata is added automatically).

FAIR and CARE

One of the pillars of the is the compliance with the and Principles.

Especially for IPBES, transparency and just handling of Indigenous and local knowledge is of utmost importance. Specifically this means, that all metadata, and if possible also data, should be:

Literature search

As IPBES assessments are built on existing knowledge, literature searches are at the base of the assessment work. Searching for the most up-to-date and adequate information is therefore vital. Many common search engines have biases, for example based on previous searches and on geographical location of the person carrying out the search, which as the additional effect that searches are not reproducible and transparant.

A literature platform that is transparent and produces reproducible results, is OpenAlex, which is recommended for literature searches. OpenAlex contains grey literature as well as scientific literature.

Searches can be done based on keywords, or references that were cited in literature that are highlighted by the experts based on expert knowledge. Automatic searches based on citations is called snowballing, which can go backwards (all references that were cited in a keypaper, and the references that were cited in those papers, etc. or forward, discovering all literature that cited the keypaper.

To assist snowball searches, a dedicated technical guideline was developed: .

Retracted references

It is vital for IPBES products to be based on solid evidence in order to safeguard their quality and reputation. Using retracted publications in the assessment can jeopardise the credibility and reputation of the platform, the assessment reports and the authors. It is therefore important that the assessment authors and technical support units for the assessments are aware of the recommendations regarding the handling of retracted publications.

What are retracted publications?

Retracted publications are any type of material that has since their publication been withdrawn. This concerns not only publications in scientific journals, but also data deposits in e.g. Zenodo or other repositories. Here, mainly scientific journals will be addressed, but similar caution needs to be applied to any source which could be retracted.

Use of AI

There are various forms of artificial intelligence, and many could potentially play a role during the assessment process. For example, texts could be translated from a native language to English or from English to a native language, and AI can even make sure that cultural differences can be ‘translated’, AI can help with coding or the creation of figures and graphs, summarise texts or generate information.

Artificial intelligence is possibly much more ingrained than expected, for example, many spelling checkers are based on artificial intelligence. This means that programs based on artificial intelligence keep getting better, as they are improved by corrections from users and improvements from training data, but also, that these programs train on your data, which is a potential threat to the confidentiality of the assessment drafts.

There are many different types of artificial intelligence, and for the most common ones, use cases are included in the Code of Practice for the ethical and responsible use of AI.

In short, the authors are always responsible for the assessment and should be able to explain and defend everything. There are risks associated with using AI, specifically, AI may be wrong or wrongly interpreted, AI is known to hallucinate, where it makes up results, sometimes including fake references (which may seem real, but don’t exist), and not always adding references where necessary, which could result in plagiarism issues. Additionally, confidentiality may be breached when AI uses the provided information to train their models. All in all, it is possible to use some forms of AI, but remain cautious. In case of any doubts, contact the technical support unit for data and knowledge management ().

Repositories

GitHub

Introduction

Almost all text on GitHub is processed through a markup language called Markdown. It is a way to style text on the web by controlling the display of the document, formatting words as bold or italic, adding images and creating lists. Mostly, Markdown is just regular text with a few non-alphabetic characters, such as # or *. More information on Markdown can be found here: .

ORCID

About ORCID

An ORCID iD reliably connects you with your works, awards and affiliations. Using an ORCID id alleviates mistaken identity; which can occur for example when your name is more common, you have changed your name, use different versions of your name or have a name that has been transliterated into other languages.
ORCID improves recognition for you and your research. Using your iD create reliable connections between your iD and your research activities. It also increases the discoverability of your research outputs.
You own and control your own record, can manage which information is connected, and how it is shared. ORCID’s visibility settings are very granular, so you can make different data elements visible to different groups.

How to register

Inform secretariat of your ORCID

The secretariat requires ORCID identifiers to link authors to IPBES products they contribute to. The best way to provide this information is by updating your website user profiles. See documentation on how to update your profile .

Link your work

ORCID allows you to sync your publications from various indexing platforms.

Airiti
BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
Crossref Metadata Search

IPBES uses Zenodo which indexes data in DataCite. Please follow the following steps to link your publications to your ORCID profile.

Reference Manager

Literature access

Research4Life

What is Research4Life?

This initiative targets experts living and/or working in low- and middle-income countries. Research4Life is designed to enhance the scholarship, teaching, research and policymaking of students, faculty, scientists, and specialists. It is a private-public partnership set up by the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), International Labour Organization (ILO), Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.

Open access literature

There are many different repositories used to search for papers directly. A short list of the most well-known ones can be found here, with urls so that these websites can be accessed directly.

Journals

Searching for articles through Google Scholar will find them in well-indexed repositories. The repository versions are usually those deposited by the authors and may include versions prior to peer review. More information on Google Scholar & article searches.

Data from the Unpaywall () database of open access journals and repositories is integrated into the MIT Libraries catalog (), which means an open accessversion of an article will appear as an option in search results if one is available.

List of other disciplinary repositories

Browser extensions

You can find open access articles through browser extensions. These tools find legally available manuscript versions as well as final published articles when the journal allows it or the journal is open access.

Enter an article’s URL, DOI, title, or other information on the OA Button website to find free, legal, open access versions. Or install the Chrome or Firefox extension, then click on it from a paywalled article to initiate a search for an open version and, when available, instantly get free access. When free access is not found, the service can contact the author directly to help them make the article available.

Directly search an open, legal database of millions of open access scholarly articles. Or install the Chrome or Firefox extension to connect to open access versions of paywalled articles. Unpaywall data is integrated into the MIT Libraries catalog, as well as Web of Science.

References

Mailing and messaging

Slack

Slack is a messaging app for business that connects people to the information they need. By bringing people together to work as one unified team, Slack transforms how organizations communicate.

Join a Slack workspace

From your desktop, visit .

Collaboration

Troubleshooting Teams

If you're experiencing issues that affect Microsoft Teams, clearing the cache on your device may help. After you clear the cache, restart Teams.

Restarting Teams after you clear the cache might take longer than usual because the Teams cache files have to be rebuilt.

Clear the Teams client cache

Website

TRACK

The purpose of TRACK is to record, document and share examples of the use of IPBES outputs, such as the IPBES assessment reports, in decision-making or in science.

Submit an entry

Here is a link to the TRACK submission portal:

TEST

Content management

Content creation

Once , you will be able to create content on the website using forms that are made available on different parts of the website

Content administration

To view a list of all content that exists click the “Content” button on the toolbar.

This is a valuable location for site administrators in managing the content on the
site, with tabs for Content, Books, Comment and Files.
Under the content tab, you can filter by content type, allowing you to search for all events for example.

Values Assessment

Full report

Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6522522

IPBES (2022). Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6522522

Download the . Download the .

Summary for Policymakers

Summary for Policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2022). Summary for Policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Pascual, U., Balvanera, P., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., González-Jiménez, D., Anderson, C. B., Athayde, S., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Jacobs, S., Kelemen, E., Kumar, R., Lazos, E., Martin, A., Mwampamba, T. H., Nakangu, B., O'Farrell, P., Raymond, C. M., Subramanian, S. M., Termansen, M., Van Noordwijk, M., and Vatn, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The role of the values of nature and valuation for addressing the biodiversity crisis and navigating towards more just and sustainable futures DOI:

Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., Lliso, B., Monroy, A. S., Guibrunet, L., Anderson, C. B., Athayde, S., Barton, D. N., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Jacobs, S., Kelemen, E., Kumar, R., Lazos, E., Martin, A., Mwampamba, T. H., Nakangu, B., O'Farrell, P., Raymond, C. M., Subramanian, S. M., Termansen, M., Van Noordwijk, M., Vatn, A., Contreras, V., and González-Jiménez, D. (2022). Chapter 1: The role of the values of nature and valuation for addressing the biodiversity crisis and navigating towards more just and sustainable futures. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Michael, C., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Conceptualizing the diverse values of nature and their contributions to people DOI:

Anderson, C. B., Athayde, S., Raymond, C. M., Vatn, A., Arias, P., Gould, R. K., Kenter, J., Muraca, B., Sachdeva, S., Samakov, A., Zent, E., Lenzi, D., Murali, R., Amin, A., and Cantú-Fernández, M. (2022). Chapter 2: Conceptualizing the diverse values of nature and their contributions to people. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The potential of valuation DOI:

Termansen, M., Jacobs, S., Mwampamba, T. H., Ahn, S., Castro, A., Dendoncker, N., Ghazi, H., Gundimeda, H., Huambachano, M., Lee, H., Mukherjee, N., Nemogá, G. R., Palomo, I., Pandit, R., Schaafsma, M., Ngouhouo, J., Choi, A., Filyushkina, A., Hernández-Blanco, M., Contreras, V., and González-Jiménez, D. (2022). Chapter 3: The potential of valuation. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Value expression in decision-making DOI:

Barton, D. N., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Lazos, E., Van Noordwijk, M., Engel, S., Girvan, A., Hahn, T., Leimona, B., Lele, S., Niamir, A., Özkaynak, B., Pawlowska-Mainville, A., Muradian, R., Ungar, P., Aydin, C., Iranah, P., Nelson, S., Cantú-Fernández, M., and González-Jiménez, D. (2022). Chapter 4: Value expression in decision-making. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The role of diverse values of nature in visioning and transforming towards just and sustainable futures DOI:

Martin, A., O'Farrell, P., Kumar, R., Eser, U., Faith, D.P., Gomez-Baggethun, E., Harmackova, Z., Horcea-Milcu, A.I., Merçon, J., Quaas, M., Rode, J., Rozzi, R., Sitas, N., Yoshida, Y., Ochieng, T.N., Koessler, A.K., Lutti, N., Mannetti, L., and Arroyo-Robles, G. (2022). Chapter 5: The role of diverse values of nature in visioning and transforming towards just and sustainable futures. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Michael, C., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Policy options and capacity development to operationalize the inclusion of diverse values of nature in decision-making DOI:

Kelemen, E., Subramanian, S., Nakangu, B., Islar, M., Kosmus, M., Nuesiri, E., Porter-Bolland, L., De Vos, A., Amaruzaman, S., Yiu, E., and Arroyo, G. (2022). Chapter 6: Policy options and capacity development to operationalize the inclusion of diverse values of nature in decision-making. In: Methodological assessment of the diverse values and valuation of nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Michael, C., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Part 4 - Guidelines for Colour

Technical Guideline Series

Revised by Renske Gudde - Technical Support Unit (TSU) of Knowledge and Data Reviewed by Aidin Niamir - Head of the Technical Support Unit of Knowledge and Data and Rainer M. Krug - IPBES Task Force on Knowledge and Data For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 1.2 Last Updated: 9 November 2023

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6838820

This technical guidelines focuses on recommendations for the use of colour in maps and can be applied to other visualisations. We present some base considerations for colour paired with links to useful resources for further exploration to be used by all IPBES experts creating figures and maps.

Begin by loading the following packages:

I. Overview of Pallets:

A Types of Pallets:

Colour is a critical key to communicating information to audiences. Often incorrect colour schemes are used that either make it difficult for people to understand the map or bias the interpretation. There are generally three types of palettes, qualitative, sequential, and diverging each corresponding to distinctive qualities of the data they represent.

Qualitative or categorical palettes have distinctive colours that are used to represent nominal or qualitative data with no presumed ordering, such as gender or cereal brands. Sequential palettes often represent continuous data such as temperature or height. These palettes are generally marked by even steps in value or intensity of a hue. Diverging palettes have two sets of sequential palettes meeting on a mutual colour which can represent continuous data with an obvious midpoint, such as data representing change from a baseline, or are often used to represent Likert scale survey responses.

B. Colour Blind Friendly Palettes

When creating a map or figure, please choose colour schemes that are colour blind friendly (more information about or about ). Printing a map or figure in black and white or grey tones are a good method to see how well the map or figure is interpretable without colour. Especially for maps, when areas without sufficient data are indicated, it is advisable to use a pattern instead of grey scales, because without the use of colour it can seem that there is a value for the data deficient areas.

There are various apps to simulate colour blindness:

, open source for Mac and iOS, to simulate various types of colour blindness
, free available for Windows, Linux and Mac, focussing on the extreme forms of colour blindness (so that people with colour blindness that is less extreme or normal colour vision can also interpret the figures easily)
, real-time simulations of red-green colour-blindness for

There is also an R-package () which provides a collection of safe colours for various types of figures and maps.

C. No rainbow colour palettes

Rainbow colour schemes are interpreted by humans to have sharp artificial boundaries that are not representative of the underlying data. in more detail the current problems involving the use of colour in science communication. An example of this is presented in the figure below taken from where geoid height is displayed using a sunset scheme and then a traditional rainbow scheme. Large jumps in the data are interpreted within the lines of light blue and yellow that are not inherent within the data.

Figure 2: Map illustrating the differences of interpretation of data displayed with a sunset palette scheme and the traditional rainbow palette.

II. RColorBrewer in R and Examples

A. RColorBrewer

In R, one can use the RColorBrewer package which provides convenient qualitative, sequential, and diverging palettes.

To display all of the prepared palettes within the RColorBrewer package run this line of code:

To display all of the colourblind friendly palettes run this:

If you would like to visualise a specific palette, specify the number of colours and the palette name.

provides a great overview on how to use the RColorBrewer package with these palettes integrated with ggplot with examples.

B. Hexadecimal

R uses hexadecimal to represent colours. “Hexadecimal is a base-16 number system used to describe colour. Red, green, and blue are each represented by two characters (#rrggbb) that has 16 possible symbols.” -

These values can be used to specify specific colours for a plot. To return the hexadecimal colour code of a palette, use this code: brewer.pal(n, name)

For example:

We could then call those specific colours in a plot, as opposed to using general names like “blue” or pre-set palettes.

C. Examples

The next two examples showcase how to use the package RColorBrewer to set palletes within maps. We will use the populated places dataset from R natural earth website available in the first example . These are just example datasets whose accuracy has not been checked.

First run this code to download country data and the large cities dataset we will be working with. The code also projects both datasets to the Robinson Projection.

Example 1: Continuous Data We will use population information contained in the large cities dataset, which is a continuous variable. The function scale_color_gradient() is used for the continuous data. The hex values were obtained from the brewer.pal function shown in the last section.

Example 2: Categorical Data We now will use the land dataset and function scale_fill_brewer() to set the colour of the continents according to one of the qualitative palettes included in the RColorBrewer package.

III. Suggestions

Use colour schemes and projections consistently throughout the chapter, if possible throughout the assessment.
No data is symbolized with the colour grey (BBBBBB; RGB:187, 187, 187)
White or light sky blue (87CEFA; RGB: 135, 206, 250) is used for the ocean in maps

IV. Additional Resources

R Colour Sheet:
Useful tool to assist in picking palettes and colours:
Tool to visualise colours as someone with different types of colour blindness:

Your feedback on this content is welcome. Let us know what other useful material would you like to see here by emailing .

Part 3 - Cartographic Guidelines

Technical Guideline Series

Prepared by Joy Kumagai - Technical Support Unit (TSU) of Knowledge and Data Reviewed by Aidin Niamir - Head of the Technical Support Unit of Knowledge and Data For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 3.0 Last Updated: 15 August 2022

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6992222

This technical guideline will review the necessary and suggested cartographic elements for maps produced as part of IPBES assessments. The guide is split into four sections, cartographic elements, disclaimers, country borders, and general suggestions and have examples of maps and the code behind them throughout. This guideline is intended for anyone involved in the process of creating maps within IPBES assessments.

Begin by loading the following packages.

I. Cartographic Elements and considerations for IPBES assessments:

A. Cartographic Elements

Generally the following cartographic elements should be included within each map:

Map with frame and legend
Graticules (North arrow and scale are not needed when graticules are included)
References for each of the layers used to make the map are required within each data deposit package associated with the map

Generally these elements do not need to be included with each map for assessments:

North arrow and scale bar - do not need to be included when graticules are present
Titles - should not be included within the map’s frame, but rather included in the caption.

Here is an example of creating a world map with these elements. The following code downloads land and ocean polygons from rnaturalearth package, creates latitude and longitude labels and graticules, and then plots a global map in robinson projection.

The messages describe the data and where it is downloaded locally.

The warnings of discarding the datum can be safetly ignored in this case*.

Now we set up the plotting frame, and plot the graticules, ocean, land, and latitude and longitude lines.

We can also use the ggplot package, with some additional functionality added with ggspatial, to map sf objects in R Studio such as in the following example:

B. Projections

IPBES has adopted the Robinson projection for all global scale maps.

The Robinson projection balances distortions in area, direction, distance, and distortions near the poles. We encourage the use of Pacific centered maps when focused on marine or Pacific themes. The pacificCentric function within the envirem package can reneter a raster on the Pacific.

For maps of countries or regions, national or appropriate regional projections are recommended. If there is no specific country projection available, the relevant Universal Transverse Mercator zone projection is suggested.

C. Color Considerations

Color is a critical key to communicating information to viewers within a map. Colors need to be used consistently in maps and figures. Often incorrect or inconsistent color schemes are used that either make it difficult for people to understand the map or bias the interpretation. For more information, please refer to the next technical guideline,

II. Disclaimers:

The standard disclaimers that should appear on all maps within IPBES assessments are the following:

Short form

The boundaries and names shown, and the designations used on the maps shown here do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by IPBES.

Long form

The designations employed and the presentation of material on the maps used in the assessment do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IPBES concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. These maps have been prepared or used for the sole purpose of facilitating the assessment of the broad biogeographical areas represented therein and for purposes of representing scientific data spatially.

For more information on how to display disputed or contentious boundary lines and territories, please contact the TSU on knowledge and data ()

III. Country Borders

If a map displays data at the country-level, special consideration needs to be taken when drawing country borders. IPBES follows current UN guidance on country borders for original global-scale maps. To assist with following the UN guidance, the technical support unit on knowledge and data and the secretariat have created a package of resources, including shapefiles, to use when displaying country borders.

To access the full guidance and associated files, please go to this website: and request access. Once you have access, download all files and read the full instructions.

Before you begin, please double check that the data is displayed at the country level and not the territory level. If your data is at the territory level ensure this is reflected in the caption and text and it is not required to follow these guidelines.

In summary, there are five layers that need to be added to the map in this order: grey areas, solid borders, dashed borders, dotted borders, and major lakes. The major lakes are used to represent cross-border waterbodies serving as a border between countries.

First, load all shapefiles into the R session and project each into the Robinson projection. The function, st_wrap_dateline(), is used to correct borders that cross the dateline.

Now, the next section of code can be split into three categories, plotting the base global map used earlier (section IA), plotting the borders in the correct order, and finally adding the graticule lables to the map.

A line width of 0.1 (lwd = 0.2) is used throughout. Lty controls the type of line, while border controls the color of the border for polygon data and can be set to transparent by using border = NA. Besides the grey areas, which should be slightly darker, the same grey shade is used for all borders (col = "grey40").

Finally, in your maps check that the colors within the map match UN guidance paying particular attention to Taiwan, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), and Arunachal Pradesh.

IV. Suggestions:

Streamlining the design of maps allows for better comparison and integration. Therefore, to facilitate the standardization of maps within IPBES, we recommend the following:

Avoid country borders, if needed country borders are black, continuous, and 0.2 in size and follow the guidance available on Zenodo ()
Include all continents in global maps, including Antarctica
Use color schemes and projections consistently throughout the chapter, if possible throughout the assessment.

Here we also include some popular resources for global and country scale spatial data:

Administrative borders:
Standardizing country names:
- ISO 3166-1 alpha 3 () codes should be used

Your feeback on this content is welcome. Let us know what other useful material would you like to see here by emailing

*The warnings of discarding the datum but preserving the +towgs1984 = values stem from an update from PROJ4 to PRROJ6 but is not worriesome in this case. The +datum= part is depreciated from GDAL >3 and sf, rgdal, and raster packages use GDAL to read files. There is a stackoverflow thread with more information

Zenodo

Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/) is a general-purpose free and open-access repository operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and funded by the European Union. It allows researchers in any subject area to deposit data sets, research software, reports, and any other research related digital artifacts. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is using Zenodo to share its products and to ensure:

open access to IPBES products
issuance of digital object identifiers (DOI) to enable citation of IPBES products.
availability of IPBES products in search functionality of CrossRef, DataCite, PubMed, RefBank, GNUB, Mendeley and Zotero.

Curation policy

Uploads (supporting material) must be material that have been prepared for Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and may include dialogue reports, reports and proceedings of workshops commissioned or supported by IPBES, software or databases that facilitate the preparation or use of IPBES reports, policy-relevant tools and methodologies that facilitate the preparation or use of IPBES reports; guidance materials that assist in the preparation of comprehensive and scientifically sound IPBES reports. Supporting materials are not accepted, approved or adopted by the IPBES Plenary.

Community URLs

Collection URL: links directly to your community collection.
Upload URL: address will automatically ensure people who use it will have their record added to your community collection
Harvesting URL: links to a OAI-PMH feed, which can be used by other digital repositories to harvest this community

A persistent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is assigned for each upload to Zenodo, which makes files citable, trackable and findable. It is possible to reserve a DOI. If a DOI is not reserved, one will automatically be assigned when the expert is submitting the file.
Metadata of each record is sent to DataCite servers during DOI registration and indexed there.
Data and metadata will be retained for the lifetime of the repository, which is as long as CERN exists.

What metadata is required by Zenodo

Metadata means ”data about data”. Metadata provide the context and information required to interpret and understand the data.

Structural metadata: e.g. the file and directory structure, record trail of steps taken during collection and analysis, information about data formats. The related sections in Zenodo are Files, Communities and Upload type
Descriptive metadata: the context and information about the data, e.g. the name of dataset, research discipline, persistent identifier, the time and place of collection and publishing of the dataset, authorship and ownership, content description (keywords, variables, etc.). The related sections in Zenodo are Basic information, Related/alternate identifiers, Contributors, References, Journal, Conference, Book/Report/Chapter, Thesis, and Subjects.

How to link a GitHub repository to Zenodo

What license should be used when uploading data?

Zenodo supports various data and license types.

How should embargoed or restricted data be handled?

Submissions can be open or restricted as in the case of anonymized sensitive data. Refer to the section on .

Submitting a dataset to Zenodo

Create a Zenodo account
Upload data to the Zenodo community through the . Detailed instructions are available below
An administrator will review the upload request and add approve it if conditions are met

Files

A minimum of 1 file is required. The maximum file(s) size per dataset is 50 GB. You can contact Zenodo if you have a larger dataset.

Communities*

Search for IPBES secretariat

Upload type: publication type*

Some guidance is needed on what to select

Publication
- Annotation collection
- Book

Basic information

Digital Object Identifier: To be assigned by Zenodo. It is possible to Reserve a DOI
Publication data
Title

License

Access right

Open access
Embargoed access
Restricted access: If you select this you will need to specify the conditions under which you grant users access to the files in your upload. User requesting access will be asked to justify how they fulfil the conditions. Based on the justification, you decide who to grant/deny access. You are not allowed to charge users for granting access to data hosted on Zenodo.

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Funding

Specify grants which have funded your research,

Specify identifiers of related publications and datasets. Supported identifiers include: DOI, Handle, ARK, PURL, ISSN, ISBN, PubMed ID, PubMed Central ID, ADS Bibliographic Code, arXiv, Life Science Identifiers (LSID), EAN-13, ISTC, URNs and URLs.

You have the following options to show the relationship of the upload to the related/alternate identifiers:

cites this upload
is cited by this upload
is supplemented by this upload

Contributors

Last name, First name of author
Affiliation
ORCID ID. Should be provided whenever possible. All authors should be encouraged to create ORCID IDs

References

e.g. Cranmer, Kyle et al. (2014). Decouple software associated to arXiv:1401.0080

Journal

Journal title
Volume
Issue

Conference

Conference title
Acronym
Dates

Book/Report/Chapter

For parts of books and reports

Publisher
Place (city, country)
ISBN

Thesis

Awarding university
Supervisors

Subjects

Specify subjects from a taxonomy or controlled vocabulary. Each term must be uniquely identified (e.g. a URL). For free form text, use the keywords field in basic information section.

Contact

Do you need support with Zenodo?

Write to [email protected]

Part 6 - How to Upload to and Download from Zenodo

Technical Guideline Series

Prepared by Joy Kumagai - Technical Support Unit (TSU) of Knowledge and Data

Reviewed by the Task Force on Knowledge and Data and Benedict Omare - Information Management Officer

For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 1.1 Last Updated: 14 July 2022

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6834336

Within this guideline, we cover how to upload, share, and download to Zenodo both manually and programmatically. This technical guideline is intended for IPBES technical support units and provides useful tips and options, but does not seek to be comprehensive. The material presented here incorporates and builds upon the guide available here: .

I. Zenodo overview

is a general-purpose free and open-access repository operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It allows researchers in any subject area to deposit data sets, research software, reports, and any other research related digital artifacts.

Zenodo provides the following services:

A persistent Digital Object identifier (DOI) is assigned for each upload to make it citable, traceable and findable
Metadata of each record is sent to DataCite servers during DOI registration and indexed there
Data and metadata will be retained for the lifetime of the repository. This is defined as the lifetime of the host laboratory CERN, which currently has an experimental programme defined for the next 20 years

For IPEBS, is the repository for long term storage of all IPBES products, including milestones, data deposit packages and associated data management reports.

The IPBES secretariat has created and is maintaining one single community on Zenodo for IPBES () where the goal is to provide:

Access to IPBES products
A digital object identifier (DOI) to enable citation of the product or deposit including direct access to its digital representation
Search functionality in numerous platforms (e.g. CrossRef, DataCite, PubMed, RefBank, GNUB and Mendeley)

Uploads to the IPBES community on Zenodo must be material that has been prepared for IPBES.

II. How to upload to Zenodo manually

The purpose of this section is to provide helpful guidance on specific aspects as opposed to going into detail on each part of the form for manual upload.

A. Some important things to mention

Descriptive metadata can be modified after publishing without changing the DOI. Files can also be re-uploaded but all data uploads are permanently stored and issued with unique version numbers and DOIs. Therefore, extra care should be used when uploading files.
can be used to become familiar with the interface and practice without permanently uploading files
A DOI can be reserved by creating a new Zenodo upload draft, selecting "Reserve DOI" under the basic information section, and saving the draft. The identifier can now be added to any documentation, including a data management report for the same upload

B. How to reserve a DOI

To obtain a digital object identifier for an entry on Zenodo, please first log into your account and start . Note that the account should be affiliated with your IPBES email address if available.

Under the section Basic information, the first field asks for a digital object identifier and directly below the descriptive text there is a box named "Reserve DOI" (see figure 1). Once this button is pressed, the text box then automatically fills in with the assigned DOI. Once you save the draft entry, which requires filling in sections with a red asterisk next to them (which can be changed at a later date), this is the corresponding DOI to the draft upload.

If creating a data management report, please include this reserved DOI at the top of the report and use the same drafted Zenodo entry for the data deposit package.

C. Authors versus contributors

The upload form for Zenodo has two explicit places where people can be attributed for their work. One can specify author names in the Basic information section, and other contributor names under the Contributors section further down the form.

Each Zenodo entry requires that at least one author name is listed per repository item. The author names then appear on the repository web page directly underneath the title and are added to the citation. The contributor names appear one line below the authors on the website and are categorized according to their specific role, but these names are not listed within the citation. An example of this can be found within the upload where the author is listed as the IPBES task force on knowledge and data, but editors, project leaders, and project members are specified to acknowledge the specific contributions of the members.

Within the form, the role of each contributor can be specified. There are many options which provide valuable information, such as contact person or research group. Some of the options are pictured in Figure 2.

Related identifiers are an incredibly useful tool that can help users understand the connections between products and easily navigate between them. For example, if one is interested in a data management report and finds the Zenodo upload, they can easily click on the related chapter and see how the analysis appears within the actual assessment chapter.

For data management reports associated with IPBES assessments, adding the DOI to the associated assessment chapter on Zenodo is important to maintain the relationship between the products.

There are a variety of options to specify relationships between products, such as the following:

"is supplemented by this upload" / "is a supplement to this upload"
"describes this upload" / "is described by this upload"
"continues this upload" / "is continued by this upload"

Additionally, ISBNs, URLs, and other identifiers can be used in addition to DOIs.

An example of how these related identifiers work can be found on the IPBES Data Management Tutorials Zenodo page pictured below.

E. Access and licenses

Uploads related to IPBES assessments should be set to open access at the latest one calendar month following the adoption of the assessment by Plenary, unless a longer embargo period is approved by the task force on knowledge and data. Please see the IPBES data and knowledge management policy for more information.

Restricted access: If you select restricted access, you will need to specify the conditions under which you grant users access to the files in your upload. A user requesting access will be asked to justify how they fulfill the conditions. Based on the justification, you decide who to grant/deny access. You are not allowed to charge users for granting access to data hosted on Zenodo.

The following licenses can be specified on Zenodo:

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International - Recommended
Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

F. Versioning and Keywords:

Please add version numbers to all entries. If the entry is updated, the version number and date can be used to keep track of which version was available and used.

To aid in discoverability, it can be helpful to add keywords to your upload that describe the deliverable, document type, and/or descriptive term.

For example:

Deliverable: global assessment; values assessment; invasive alien species assessment
Document Type: Full assessment report; Summary for Policymakers; Supplementation material; data management report
Descriptive term: Data policy

III. How to upload to Zenodo using GitHub

Zenodo and GitHub have the possibility of being linked so that a new release on GitHub can create a new or an update to an existing Zenodo repository. Here we will discuss the context-specific considerations for IPBES and give a overview of the process.

One case where it would be helpful to have this link established would be if one has a project which utilizes a set of codes for and analysis with associated figures. The code, resulting figures, and data management report (perhaps in markdown format) could be included in the GitHub repository, and each release for a milestone draft could automatically have the associated Zenodo page updated.

Unfortunately, your repository on GitHub needs to be public for it to be published on Zenodo. Also, the access is automatically set to public on the Zenodo entry. Thus, the access would need to be adjusted after the release to restricted instead. IPBES products stemming from assessments need to be set to restricted access until the assessment is approved by Plenary.

To link your GitHub repository to a Zenodo page, follow the these steps:

Log in and choose your repository on GitHub and ensure it is publicly available
Log into your Zenodo account
Now, next to your email at the top right of the Zenodo page, there is a little drop down menu, select GitHub and select authorize application to give Zenodo the permissions it needs. Once this occurs, you should see a list of repositories, toggle the button next to your chosen repository into the ON position (see figure 4)

Each new release should create a new version of the Zenodo Upload, published automatically.

For a descriptive step by step guide on this process, please visit the available is also helpful to understand how to create a new release that is synced between GitHub and Zenodo.

One of the key benefits of Zenodo is that when you create an upload it provides a DOI for the entry. One can then find the Zenodo webpage by typing the following into a browser.

https://doi.org/ [add DOI of the upload]

For example, see the Zenodo upload of this technical guideline here:

Diving deeper, Zenodo actually issues two DOI’s. One DOI refers to the specific version, while there is an additional DOI created which cites all versions and resolves to the latest one. For instance, if a data management report is updated between one of the milestone drafts and the final version for an assessment, include the DOI that cites all versions in the assessment, thus ensuring anyone who clicks on the URL will be automatically sent to the most recent version.

Generally, when sharing your Zenodo uploads please use the DOI that cites a specific version unless you only want to refer the newest version.

One can find this additional DOI in the versions section of the published webpage of the upload. For example, when referring to the IPBES data management policy (figure 5) we use this doi:

V. How to download from Zenodo

A. Manually

To download files from Zenodo, all one needs to do is to navigate to the entry they would like to download, scroll down to the Files section on the webpage, and press the button download next to each of the files they would like to download (highlighted in Figure 6). This functionality can be very useful to quickly check files or to save locally and quickly. Resources uploaded to the IPBES community can be found on https://zenodo.org/communities/ipbes.

B. Programmatically using R

For other applications, such as downloading a dataset to be used in a script, one may want to have the script download the files, so that the most recent version is always used and the source is explicit.

Within Python, there's a package available on GitHub which allows one to download from Zenodo using the function zenodo_get.

Within R, there's a handy function called from the package that allows one to download from Zenodo easily.

To illustrate this in R, all of the files associated with the Zenodo repository can be downloaded programmatically at once with the following code:

The shapefile for the ipbes regions and subregions is within the zipped folder called "ipbes_regions_subregions_shape_1.1.zip". Once these files are downloaded, one can unzip the shapefile, call it into memory, and begin to use it as shown here:

For any questions please feel free to contact us at . If you have any Zenodo specific questions they may be answered on their .

A - File naming

Prepared by Renske Gudde - IPBES Technical Support Unit (TSU) for Knowledge and Data and Rainer M. Krug - IPBES Task Force on Knowledge and Data. Reviewed by Aidin Niamir and Yanina V. Sica - IPBES Technical Support Unit for Knowledge and Data and the IPBES Task Force on Knowledge and Data (Hanno Seebens and Xubin Pan)

For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 1.1 Last Updated: 27 February 2024

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10004405

The IPBES assessment process is a lengthy and complex process, spanning over multiple years and involving many contributors and products. It is therefore important to easily track and find files related to the assessment. Here, an IPBES specific file name scheme for the assessments is being proposed.

Files used in IPBES should be named in a consistent and standardised way, while simultaneously informing about the content of the file, to avoid file loss and increase findability of the files, transparency of the final assessments, and reusability. For example, using the filename Fig3.8 or ILK dialogue meeting Asia seems to be informative, but when a user is interested in ILK dialogue meeting reports, it is unclear from which assessment the report comes and when the dialogue meeting took place, and when a user finds ‘Fig3.8’ in the download folder on their computer, the file name does not provide any indication of the contents and topic of that file. Having a standardised way to create file names improves the transparency and findability of information, and also avoids file names like DMR_systematic_review_final_final_JS_final_approved.

Apart from human understanding, the possibility to parse the file names automatically and deduce information about the file is an important second aspect of the naming conventions.

The recommended naming of files is built up in a similar way as the IBAN codes used by banks, and the proposed file name convention for IPBES products is:

IPBES_[assessment abbreviation]_[chapter]_[document type]_[short description]_[version]

In detail: All sections are required to be filled in.

IPBES: The acronym IPBES should be always present (in capital letters)

[assessment_abbreviation]: the abbreviation of the assessment as was approved during the scoping of the assessment, e.g., IAS for invasive alien species, NXS for the Nexus, TCA for transformative change and BBA for business and biodiversity (in capital letters).

Full Name

Short Name

Abbreviation

[chapter]: chapter and subchapter number or “SPM”, e.g. “Ch5.2”. This is an optional field; if there is no chapter, use “__” (i.e. two underscores) to keep the file name machine readable.

[document_type] The kind of document it is (e.g., a meeting report, chapter or dataset). Suggested are the following types (a complete list is maintained by the data tsu):

[short_description] should describe the document in preferably 1-5 words (e.g., “dialogue Asia”, “systematic review topic chapter”). Clear descriptions are much easier to use than ambiguous ones, so when it is not possible to add a description in 1-5 words, it is recommended to use more words.

[version] Version in the format as described in the versioning scheme for IPBES products. The version number indicates at which state in the assessment a file was uploaded. It is therefore important to upload a new version (with updated version in the file name) at every milestone. Access to previous versions can be restricted in order to avoid confusion.

The sections are separated with “_”, and multiple words within a section can be separated with “ ” (space).

Examples

Figure

The final, interoperable, version of figure 3.6 that will be submitted to the Plenary, the phylogeny of marine mammals, of the Sea life assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_SLA_Ch3_figure_fig 3.6_Phylogeny of marine mammals_v10.0.0.ai

Figure 7.8 showing the biodiversity hotspots on a global map, that will be submitted for the second external review as part of chapter 7 of the Hotspots assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_HA_Ch7_figure_fig 7.8 Global biodiversity hotspots_v2.0.0.png

Table

The final version of table 5.4 that will be submitted for the first order draft for the Sea life assessment, containing a list of endangered marine animals:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_SLA_Ch5_table_Table 5.4 Endangered marine animals_v1.0.0.docx

Table 7.11 showing the number of endangered species in biodiversity hotspots, that will be submitted for the third external review as part of chapter 7 of the Hotspots assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_HA_Ch7_table_Table 7.11 Endangered species in hotspots_v3.0.0.docx

Data Management Report

The first data management report for figure 4.1 of the invasive alien species assessment, uploaded to Zenodo before the submission for the first external review, would be:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_IAS_Ch4_DMR_Fig4.1 biodiversity versus water quality_v0.0.0.docx

The version of the data management report for figure 7.8 on the biodiversity hotspots map for the Hotspots assessment that will be submitted for the second external review as part of chapter 7 of the Hotspots assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_HA_Ch7_DMR_Fig7.8 biodiversity hotspots map_v2.0.0.docx

Meeting report

Report about the third meeting to advance the summary for policymakers of the Sea life assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_SLA__meeting report_Third SPM meeting_v1

Dialogue Workshop Report

The third version of a report on the dialogue meeting for Asia taking place after the second external review would be of the MR assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_MR_dialogue__dialogue report_Asia_v2.0.3.zip

Dataset

The references found during a systematic literature search on ILK and nature conservation for the Hotspots assessment:

Sections

Example

→ IPBES_HA__Dataset_References systematic literature search ILK and nature conservation_v1

Google Groups

For email & distribution lists, sharing, configuring settings, and more.

Important links:

What is Google Groups?

It is a tool from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests through sharing a common email address. It can be used to invite members to a Google meet, set up chat rooms and share documents for collaboration.

You can use Google Groups to

Send email to all group members with a single address
Invite group members to a meeting and participate in discussions
Share content with members, including documents, sites, videos, and calendars

How to create a Group

You will need to have a if you don't already have one.

Sign in to Google Groups:
- Sign in to your Google Account if necessary. Click the blue Sign in button in the top-right corner of the page, then enter your Google Account email or phone number and password.
- You can switch between different google accounts by clicking on your profile image at the upper-right corner of your screen and on the menu, select the account you would like to use or click on

How to add people to a Group

Note: The invitations expire after 7 days, but requests to join a group never expire. You can .

Limitations on adding people to groups

Maximum group members—A group can have unlimited members, so there’s no limit to the number of people you can invite, add directly, or approve to join a group.
Child accounts—You can’t add a user with a child Google Account to a group through any method.

If you're a group owner, or if you have permission to manage members, you can add people to your group in three ways:

How to invite someone via email

Sign in to then click the name of a group.
On the left, click Members.
At the top, click Add members.

How to add people to your group directly

When you add people directly, you can assign them the member, manager, or owner role.

Sign in to then click the name of a group.
On the left, click Members.
At the top, click Add members.

How to approve people who applied to join your group

You can view requests to join your group and accept or deny them on an individual basis.

Sign in to and click the name of a group.
On the left, click Pending members.
Take one of the following actions:

How to view all members of a group

You can view all group members as well as people who have been banned from a group.

Sign in to then click the name of a group.
On the left, click Members.
To view people who have been banned from the group, on the left, click Banned users.

How to find and join a group

To join a group that already exists, just use the search box to find the group and ask to join.

How to search for groups

Sign in to .
In the left panel, click My groups, Recent groups, or All groups.
Choose a search option:

How to join a new group

Sign in to .
Click All groups and find the group that you want to join.
Click Join group.

How to join a Google group without a Gmail address

If you don't have a Google Account, you can:

Read posts in public groups
Search for posts in public groups

You need a Google Account to

Create and manage a group
Join a group
Post to a group

To use these features with Google Groups, you can .

You can also link a non-Gmail email address to an existing Google Account. The linked email address can be made an owner or manager. Learn how to .

How to create and respond to conversations

You can start or join conversations in Google Groups by posting a new message or responding to posted messages in your groups.

How to start a new conversation

Start a group discussion about a topic you’re interested in.

Sign in to .
Click the name of a group.
At the top left, click New conversation.

How to read and respond to messages

You can read and respond to messages using Google Groups or email, depending on how the group is set up.

Respond via Google Groups

Sign in to .
Click the name of a group.
Click the message you want to read.

Respond via email

Click the message in your email inbox. You can select any email in the conversation thread to reply to.
To respond only to the person who posted, select Reply. To respond to the whole group, select Reply all.

How to choose who will receive your messages

Requires the Owner or Manager role.

You can decide whether members can reply via email to the entire group or only to certain members of the group. You can also choose to have every message sent to a specified email address.

Sign in to .
Click the name of a group.
On the left, go to Group settingsEmail options.

How to delete a message

Deleting messages from other members requires the Who can moderate content permission.

You can delete messages you posted, and possibly messages from other group members.

Open the message you want to delete.
In the message entry, click MoreDelete.
In the confirmation box, click OK.

Note: If a post is inappropriate, you can .

How to view unread messages

To see the number of unread messages for a group, set up a filter in your email client.

If Groups for Business is turned on, to see the number of unread messages for a group, your subscription option must be set to Each email. Visit .

Here are example instructions for Gmail.

In Gmail, . In the search field, on the To line, enter the group's email address.
After clicking Create filter:
1. Check the Apply the label box.

Your group now appears as a folder in the left panel. As messages arrive to the group, the number of unread messages appears next to the folder.

How to change your display name or email address

You can change your display name, photo, email address, and how frequently you get an email from the group.

Sign in to .
Click the name of a group.
On the left, click My membership settings.

How to leave a group or unsubscribe from email

If you no longer want to participate in a group or receive the group’s email, you can:

Unsubscribe from email from the group—You’re still a member of the group, but you no longer receive email when there’s activity.
Leave the group—After you take this action, you can no longer access the group if it's not public.
Change your settings—If the Add me to their groups setting is on, a group manager can add you to a group without your permission and then send you messages from that group. Stop people from directly adding you to a group by following the instructions in

Unsubscribe or leave a group using Google Groups

You can stop getting email from a group by changing your settings or leaving the group.

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Unsubscribe and leave a group using email

To leave a group and stop getting email from it, you can send an email to group name+unsubscribe@group domain. For example, to leave the group [email protected], you would send a message to [email protected]. You can send the request with no subject or body text.

Troubleshoot leaving a group

If you’re signed in to a work or school account, you can't leave a group that your administrator set to include all members of your work or school.

If you tried to unsubscribe and are still getting email, make sure:

You unsubscribed using the same email address that gets the group email.
The email is not being forwarded from an address that still belongs to the group. If they are, email the address and ask them to remove your address.
You’re not signed up for the group with more than one email address. If you are, unsubscribe that email address as well.

Zotero

Zotero is, at the most basic level, a reference manager. It is designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and articles. In Zotero, each of these references constitutes an item. More broadly, Zotero is a powerful tool for collecting and organizing research information and sources.

IPBES has adopted Zotero so all experts must use Zotero:

To manage references
To add in-text citations as they write in word processors e.g. MS Word and Google Docs

Getting started

Install Zotero

To use Zotero and its functions and make importing items easy, you need to install:

The Zotero desktop app
The Zotero Connector for Chrome or Firefox – note that some experts have reported issues with Zotero on Safari.

Zotero should operate the same whether you are using Windows or macOS, although there may be slight differences in how the desktop app appears and how certain functions are accessed. Thus, the Zotero screenshots below may look slightly different from how the Zotero desktop app appears on a user’s screen. One difference is how to access the Zotero Preferences window to change or customize settings in the Zotero desktop app:

Windows, upper left corner: Click Edit > Preferences > Sync tab

macOS, upper left corner: Click Zotero > Preferences > Sync tab

Launch Zotero

Zotero can be opened from your operating system's dock or file manager like any other program

Register with Zotero

Go to
Click “Log in” in the upper right corner and then “Register for a free account” (in blue font above the login fields)
You can update your email address and personal information once you are logged in.

Join a group in Zotero

During the development of an assessment, private groups will be created at the assessment or chapter level depending on the needs of the assessment. Private groups means that only experts who are invited to the group will be able to see the group’s page. The private groups are completely hidden from group searches. They are not shown on members’ public profile pages and will not appear in search engine results. File sharing will be made available to allow group members to access and share files in addition to references. Invitations to the groups are managed by the assessment technical support unit.

Important terms

Relevant Zotero documentation: https://www.zotero.org/support/collections_and_tags

Item

Zotero refers to a reference as an item; for example, when you add a reference to a Zotero library, you are an adding an item to that library.

Collection

Collection: A group or subgroup within a library that allows for hierarchical organization; a collection is like a folder on a computer and is represented by a folder icon. The same item can belong to multiple collections. An item can be imported directly into a collection or imported to the library and then added to a collection. Note that collections are not portable when copying items between different libraries. Collections are used to organize items belonging to a Zotero library.

Due to how Zotero permissions work, everyone has access to all the chapter collections. Please only work within your own chapter collection (and subcollections if applicable) and do not add or delete items from other chapters’ collections or subcollections

Tag

A tag is like hashtag or keyword and is used for more detailed characterization of an item than simply placing an item in a collection or subcollection. The number of tags that can be assigned to an item is unlimited. A library or collection can be filtered by a tag or a set of tags to show the items that have been assigned the selected tag(s). Note that tags are portable; if you copy an item from one library to another the item’s tag(s) will transfer along with the item.

Navigating Zotero

Left pane

Libraries, collections, subcollections, duplicates
Tags are displayed in the lower left corner

Center pane

Items are displayed in the center panel:

Standard columns for the center panel are Title, Creator (i.e., the author of the reference), and attachment (paper clip icon)
To sort the center panel view: Click on the column heading to sort by that heading; for example, if you click on the “Title” column header, items will be arranged alphabetically by title; clicking the “Title” header again will sort the items in reverse alphabetical order
You can add additional columns to the center panel view by right clicking one of the column headers and selecting additional headers from the popup list; for example, you may wish to have a column for “Year” which displays the year the refence was published

Right pane

Information for a given item is displayed in the right panel when you click on an item in the center panel.

Important configurations

Make sure you are sign in with the same email address that has been invited to an assessments library.

Config 2: Sync libraries

You need to be signed in on the Zotero client

Consider syncing only the libraries you use. This will minimize bandwidth requirements and improve the fludity of your work.

Go to preferences
- Windows, upper left corner: Click Edit > Preferences > Sync tab
- macOS, upper left corner: Click Zotero > Preferences > Sync tab

Config 3: Disable automatic tagging

Open Zotero preferences and click on the General tab (gear icon):

Windows, upper left corner: Click Edit > Preferences > Sync tab

macOS, upper left corner: Click Zotero > Preferences > Sync tab

Under Miscellaneous, uncheck the box for “Automatically tag items with keywords and subject headings” (Figure 4)

Config 4: Configure style language

In the, click on the American Psychological Association 7th edition. If it is not in the list of styles, click the 'Get additional styles' button, then find the “American Psychological Association 7th edition” style and click ok.

Adding bibliography to library

Option 1: Add item by identifier (recommended method)

Zotero can using their an ISBN number, Digital Object Identifier (DOI), or PubMed ID. This is done by clicking the Add Item by Identifier button () in the Zotero toolbar, typing in the ID number, and clicking OK. You can even paste or enter (press Shift+Enter for a larger box) a list of such identifiers at once

Option 2: Add item using the Zotero connector

The Zotero Connector is a very useful tool for adding items to Zotero as it allows you to import items directly into Zotero with one click while browsing the web.

Zotero recommends adding items via a web browser rather than adding them manually. When adding an item from the web, Zotero automatically extracts the item’s metadata and downloads the PDF if available. This reduces errors in the item information.

Make sure you installed the Zotero Connector
Make sure the Zotero desktop app is open
Complete your browser search for an item (i.e. reference)

The Zotero save button resemble different icon forms depending on the type of item the current webpage is displaying – for example, the save icon for a journal article is a lined sheet of paper and the save icon for a book is a blue book

A webpage can be saved even if Zotero does not recognize the information on it – the save icon will be a gray webpage

After you click the save button, a popup window will appear showing which Zotero collection the item is being saved to

Make sure you are saving to your chapter collection or a subcollection for your chapter within the Nexus Assessment library
If you want to save the item to a different collection or subcollection than the current selection, you can change the selection in the popup window (Figure 13)

Option 3: Add item manually

Items can be by clicking the green New Item () button in the Zotero toolbar, then selecting the appropriate item type. Metadata can then be added by hand in the right-hand pane. Apart from the versatility this provides, it is important for adding primary documents.

Citing

Citing in MS word

Once you have the document open the Word desktop app, do the following to add a citation:

Open Zotero desktop app if it is not open already
In the Word document, place the cursor where you want to add the citation
Click on the Zotero tab in the ribbon at the top of the document

American Psychological Association (APA) 7th edition
Language: English (UK)
For Store Citations As, select Fields

You can also set the citation style and language in the Preferences window

To set the citation style, open the Preferences window > Cite tab > Styles tab > select American Psychological Association (APA) 7th edition
To set the language, open the Preferences window > Advance tab > select English (UK) in the Language field

Zotero uses Citation Style Language (CSL) to properly format citations in many different bibliographic . IPBES has adopted the American Psychological Association 7th edition style. To use this style:

Managing Zotero library items

Managing duplicates

For more information about duplicate items, please see here: https://www.zotero.org/support/duplicate_detection

Given the number of nexus assessment authors, it is inevitable that the same item will be added to the same collection more than once or to multiple collections (i.e., multiple Zotero chapter folders). Thus, there will be duplicate items in the group library and possibly in a given collection or subcollection.

Detect duplicates

Click on the “Duplicate Items” collection in the left-hand panel under the Nexus Assessment library. The items Zotero thinks are duplicates will be displayed in the center panel. You may find it helpful to then sort the items by title. Note that Zotero finds duplicates within a library, not a collection.

If you decide to detect duplicates, always MERGE duplicates (see below) rather than deleting them. Merging retains all of the collections and tags associated with an item. Please do not delete a duplicate – this removes the item and its information and you may end up removing an item or an item’s information from a chapter other than your own.

Merge duplicates

To merge items in the “Duplicate Items” collection:

Select an item in the center pane
Zotero automatically co-selects the other items that it thinks are duplicates – all of the duplicates for the selected item will be highlighted in light blue
In the right pane, click the “Merge Items” button

Select one item to be the master item from the list at the top of the right pane
Select the version of mismatched fields to include using the icons to the right of each field

Moving Documents with Zotero Citations Between Word Processors

It is important to retain citation links in the final versions of documents.

Authors have different preferences for their choice in word processors. Many experts prefer to use Google Docs because it facilitates online collaboration and it is easy to use. The drafts and and final documents are however, reviewed in MS Word so it is important to convert documents between different processors carefully to retain citation links.

If you use the Zotero word processor plugin to add citations to your document and then open the document in another word processor, the Zotero citation links will be lost. To retain active Zotero citations when moving between programs, you can use the plugin to convert the document to a temporary format that can be safely transferred and then restore it in another supported word processor.

Word to Google Docs

In Word, use File → Save As… to create a copy of the document as a .docx with a new filename (e.g., “My Document - Transfer.docx”).
Click Document Preferences in the Zotero plugin and select “Switch to a Different Word Processor…”.
After the document has been converted, save the changes (File → Save).

Google Docs to Word

In the Google Doc, use File → Make a Copy… to create a copy of the document.
In the new document, select “Switch word processors…” from the Zotero menu.
Select File → Download as → Microsoft Word (.docx) and save the converted file.

For more information please refer to

Generating a bibliography list

To create a reference list based on the citations added to the document:

Place the cursor where you want to add the reference list
Click on the Zotero tab in the ribbon at the top of the document
Click the “Add/Edit Bibliography” button in the Zotero ribbon

Troubleshooting

Some common issues when initially using Zotero:

Cannot view group library in Zotero Desktop Client

Make sure you are logged in with the same email address that received the invitation to join a group.

There is no Zotero tab in the Microsoft Word ribbon

There is no Zotero tab in the Microsoft Word ribbon
The Zotero Desktop Client is not open

Word could not communicate with Zotero

The Zotero desktop app is not open – open the desktop app
There is a slight lag in the communication between Word and Zotero – try again

Citations are being overwritten

There is a Zotero open citation dialog box – try minimizing any open windows or applications to see if there is an open dialog box; if so, close the box

Additional information and guidance

List of Zotero documentation:

Help and troubleshooting:

Frequently Asked Questions:

Knowledge base:

Zotero Forums:

The Zotero Forums are searchable and can be very helpful if you have a unique or strange issue that cannot be resolved by the more common troubleshooting options.

Contact

Please contact the assessment technical support unit if you have questions regarding getting files into the assessment/chapter library, organizing the assessment/chapter Library and taking notes, generating bibliographies,citations, and reports.

Part 7 - How to Cite IPBES Assessment Reports

Technical Guideline Series

Prepared by the technical support unit of knowledge and data

For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 6.0 Last Updated: October 6th 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5783347

This technical guideline is a resource for everyone to cite previous IPBES assessments starting with the IPBES Global Assessment. BibTeX and RIS files are available to download beneath each citation. Assessments approved at each future Plenary session will be added to the list. Suggested citations are created by the assessments.

I. Business and Biodiversity Assessment

Full report

IPBES (2026). Methodological assessment of the impact and dependence of business on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Summary for Policymakers

Summary for policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People DOI:

IPBES (2026). Summary for policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People. Jones M., Polasky S., Rueda X., Brooks S., Carter Ingram J., Egoh B. N., von Hase A., Kohsaka R., Kulak M., Leach K., Loyola R., Mandle L., Rodriguez-Osuna V., Schaafsma M. and Sonter L. J. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Setting the scene DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17074175

Rodriguez Osuna, V., Ingram J.C., Budiani I., de Jesus E., Inostroza L., Kalumanga Ngallaba E., Perram A., Schultz L., Shimshack J., Teren G., Ayambire R., Priyadarshini P. (2026). Chapter 1: Setting the scene. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2

Chapter 2: How does business depend on biodiversity? DOI:

Egoh B.N., Schaafsma M., Duan H., Hochard J., Joo W., López Cubillos S., Paspaldzhiev I., Prodanova H., Willemen L., Koh N.S., Lankia T., Vargas O. (2026). Chapter 2: How does business depend on biodiversity? In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 3

Chapter 3: How does business impact biodiversity? DOI:

Mandle L., Koshaka R., Bull J., Crona B., Johnson M.A., Oguge N.O., Panwar R., Romero C., Ávila Ortega D.I., Chelangat S. Chetty K., Vargas O. (2026). Chapter 3: How does business impact biodiversity?. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Approaches for measurement of business dependencies and impacts on biodiversity DOI:

Brooks S., Kulak M., Feger C., Lee H., van Oorschot M., Pavani B.F., Pfister S., Verones F., Zanetti E.A., Bedford J., Nemecek D., Vera Paz A. (2026). Chapter 4: Approaches for measurement of business dependencies and impacts on biodiversity. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Businesses as key actors in transformative change: options for action DOI:

von Hase A., Sonter L.J., Nguyen T., Adam J., Dickinson S., Enrici M-H., Fabregas T., Howard P., Hummel Wicher N.L., Husain H.J., Lasmana F.P., Narain D., Vera Paz A., Tarasova-Krasiieva, O., Vargas, O. (2026). Chapter 5: Businesses as key actors in transformative change: options for action. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Creating an enabling environment for business: options for action by governments, the financial sector, Indigenous people and local communities and civil society DOI:

Leach K., Loyola R., Chatwin A., Leenders C., Mukumbuta Guillemin I., Park M.S., Syed Hazari S.M., Yiu E. Prodani K., Rabeschini G., Vera Paz A. (2026). Chapter 6: Creating an enabling environment for business: options for action by governments, the financial sector, Indigenous people and local communities and civil society. In: Methodological Assessment Report of the Impact and Dependency of Business on Biodiversity and Nature’s Contributions to People of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Rueda X., Jones M., Polasky S., (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

II. Transformative Change Assessment

Full report

IPBES (2024). Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Summary for Policymakers

Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2024). Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., Agrawal, A., Bennett, E., Biggs, O., Calderón Contreras, R., Carr, E., Frantzeskaki, N., Gosnell, H., Gurung, J., Lambertucci, S., Leventon, J., Liao, C., Reyes García, V., Shannon, L., Villasante, S., Wickson, F., Zinngrebe, Y., and Perianin, L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Transformative change and a sustainable world DOI:

Gurung, J., Leventon, J., Wickson, F., Dabezies, J., Olemako, T., Penca, J., Rajvanshi, A., Remans, R., Turnhout, E., Yoshida, Y., Kahrić, A., Naggea, J., Bridgewater, P., Reyers, B., and Renaud, A. (2024). Chapter 1: Transformative change and a sustainable world. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2

Visions of a sustainable world – for nature and people DOI:

Villasante, S., Shannon, L., Liao, C., Betemariam, E., Cunningham, S., Ellis, E., Hausner, V., Huang, Q., Mannetti, L., Otero, I., Piñeiro, G., Prasad Gautam, A., Waddock, S., Wheeler, H., Fouqueray, T., Karasov, O., Tasse Taboue, G., Mazzeo, N., Mishra, A., and Guibal, C. (2024). Chapter 2: Visions of a sustainable world – for nature and people. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 3

How transformative change occurs DOI:

Bennett, E., Biggs, O., Calderón Contreras, R., Golden Kroner, R., Vianna Mansur, A., Woroniecki, S., Acar, S., Aksoy, Z., Alpizar, F., Lam, D., Horcea-Milcu, A.-I., Linnér, B.-O., Mehta, L., Campos, C., Nishi, M., Rahiri, N., Richardson, M., Sabinot, C., Simão Seixas, C., Stokland, H., Balvanera, P., Chan, K., Guibal, C., and Garibaldi, L. (2024). Chapter 3: How transformative change occurs. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 4

Overcoming the challenges of achieving transformative change towards a sustainable world DOI:

Frantzeskaki, N., Lambertucci, S., Carr, E., Dempsey, J., Karamidehkordi, E., Sengupta, A., Rojas Marchini, F., Vogel, C., Andriamahefazafy, M., Boonstra, W., Espinoza-Cisneros, E., Garcia, K., Morita, K., Nelson, V., Ojeda, D., Plieninger, T., Stirling, A., Tokunaga, K., Chen, R., Metzger, J.-P., Smith, P., and Guibal, C. ( 2024). Chapter 4: Overcoming the challenges of achieving transformative change towards a sustainable world. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 5

Realizing a sustainable world for nature and people: transformative strategies, actions and roles for all DOI:

Gosnell, H., Reyes-García, V., Zinngrebe, Y., Almeida Magris, R., Benessaiah, K., Bonilla-Moheno, M., Chandipo, R., Claudet, J., Gemmill-Herren, B., Goldstein, B., Huntjens, P., Ifejika Speranza, C., Nakao, F., Pandit, R., Pereira, L., Raab, K., Soares, T., Tittonell, P., Guo, X., Miwa, K., Joly, C., Zaccagnini, M., Guibal, C., and Garibaldi, L. (2024). Chapter 5: Realizing a sustainable world for nature and people: transformative strategies, actions and roles for all. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L., and Agrawal, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

III. Nexus Assessment

Full report

Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2024). Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Summary for Policymakers

Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2024). Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. McElwee, P. D., Harrison, P. A., van Huysen, T. L., Alonso Roldán, V., Barrios, E., Dasgupta, P., DeClerck, F., Harmáčková, Z. V., Hayman, D. T. S., Herrero, M., Kumar, R., Ley, D., Mangalagiu, D., McFarlane, R. A., Paukert, C., Pengue, W. A., Prist, P. R., Ricketts, T. H., Rounsevell, M. D. A., Saito, O., Selomane, O., Seppelt, R., Singh, P. K., Sitas, N., Smith, P., Vause, J., Molua, E. L., Zambrana-Torrelio, C., and Obura, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Introducing the nexus DOI:

Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P., Phang, S. C., Zambrana-Torrelio, C., Enrico, L., Giraudoux, P., Jarvis, R. M., Karim, P. G., Rivera Ferre, M. G., Luque, S., Prescott, G. W., Sietz, D., Turetta, A. P. D., and Obura, D. (2024). Chapter 1: Introducing the nexus. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Status and past trends of interactions in the nexus DOI:

Prist, P. R., Seppelt, R., Hayman, D. T. S., Molua, E. L., Arneth, A., Biber-Freudenberger, L., Bukvareva, E., Chaudhary, S., Dubey, P. K., Fischer, J., Földvári, G., Godoy-Faúndez, A., Howe, C., Hussain, A., Lorilla, R. S., Maire, E., Materu, S. F., Miyake, Y., Türkmen, A., and Vanham, D. (2024). Chapter 2: Status and past trends of interactions in the nexus. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, German. DOI:

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Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Future interactions across the nexus DOI:

Harmáčková, Z. V., Rounsevell, M. D. A., Selomane, O., Awuku-Sowah, E. M., Budiharta, S., Coll, M., Hales, S., Jung, M., Kumar, P., Leclère, D., Metaxas, A., Meirelles Oliveira , B., Nyelele, C., Owuor, M. A., Popp, A., Rashleigh, B., Thomas, S. M., Tsuchiya, K., Villamor, G., and Yue, T. X. (2024). Chapter 3: Future interactions across the nexus. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Policy and sociopolitical options across the nexus that could facilitate and accelerate the transition to a range of sustainable futures DOI:

Mangalagiu D., Saito, O., Sitas, N., Dias, A. C. E., Felipe-Lucia, M. R., Filyushkina, A., Ghosh, S., Gonçalves, L. R., Hiwasaki, L., Kok, M. T. J., Lynch, A. J., Machado, M. R., Ometto, J. P., Pires, A. P. F., Rhodes, J. R., Vallet, A., and Xie, L. (2024). Chapter 4: Policy and sociopolitical options across the nexus that could facilitate and accelerate the transition to a range of sustainable futures. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Options for delivering sustainable approaches DOI:

Ricketts, T. H., Herrero, M., Smith, P., Alonso Roldán, V., Barrios, E., Dasgupta, P., DeClerck, F., Kumar, R., McFarlane, R. A., Paukert, C., Singh, P. K., Lavorel, S., Aboubakrine, M. W. M., Aguiar S., Akamani, K., Benedek, Z., Campbell, D., Castro-Díaz, R., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Cherubini, F., das Neves, C. G., De La Cruz, P., Díaz-José, J., Duchková, H., Dunnett, S., Santos, M. J., Gupta, H., Gyawali, D., Handa, C., Hill, S., Hori, M., Ito, A., Joshi, G. R., Keune, H., Khan, S., Koltz, A. M., Kouame, A. A., Kuiken, T., Kulmala, S., Lalika, M., Lee, K.-C., Llope, M., Mácová, K., Melo, F., Milano, F. A., Minaverry, C. M., Morand, S., Mustafa, M. A., Rafa, N., Rai, K. K., Reuben, R. C., Rosado-May, F. J., Samoilys M., Sandin, L., Simatele, M. D., Sivadas, D., Spierenburg, M., Tirado, M. C., Twongyirwe, R., Vale, M. M., Williams, D. R., Xu, X., and van Huysen, T. L. (2024). Chapter 5: Options for delivering sustainable approaches. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.0

Chapter 5.0: Options for delivering sustainable approaches - Introduction DOI:

Ricketts, T. H., Herrero, M., Smith, P., Alonso Roldán, V., Barrios, E., Dasgupta, P., DeClerck, F., Kumar, R., McFarlane, R. A., Paukert, C., Singh, P. K., and van Huysen, T. L. (2024). Chapter 5.0: Options for delivering sustainable approaches – Introduction. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.1

Chapter 5.1: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable use DOI:

Alonso Roldán, V., Lavorel, S., Aguiar S., Akamani K., Dunnett, S., Handa, C., Hill, S., Lee, K.-C., Mácová, K., Melo, F., Rai, K. K., Samoilys M., and Sivadas, D. (2024). Chapter 5.1: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to biodiversity conservation, restoration and sustainable use. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.2

Chapter 5.2: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to water DOI:

Kumar, R., Pauker, C., Santos, M. J., Gyawali, D., Kouame, A. A., Kulmala, S., Lalika, M., Minaverry, C. M., Rafa, N., Sandin, L., and Simatele, M. D. (2024). Chapter 5.2: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to water. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.3

Chapter 5.3: Options for delivering sustainable food systems DOI:

Barrios, E., DeClerck, F., Benedek, Z., Campbell, D., Castro-Díaz, R., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Joshi, G. R., Milano, F. A., Mustafa, M. A., Rosado-May, F. J., Spierenburg, M., Twongyirwe, R., and Williams, D. R. (2024). Chapter 5.3: Options for delivering sustainable food systems. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.4

Chapter 5.4: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to health DOI:

McFarlane, R. A., Dasgupta, P., Aboubakrine, M. W. M., das Neves, C. G., De La Cruz, P., Keune, H., Koltz, A. M., Kuiken, T., Morand, S., and Reuben, R. C. (2024). Chapter 5.4: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to health. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.5

Chapter 5.5: Options for delivering biodiversity-related approaches to climate change, adaptation and mitigation, including relevant aspects of the energy system DOI:

Singh, P. K., Smith, P., Cherubini, F., Díaz-José, J., Duchková, H., Gupta, H., Hori, M., Ito, A., Khan, S., Llope, M., Tirado, M. C., Vale, M. M., and Xu, X. (2024). Chapter 5: Options for delivering sustainable biodiversity-related approaches to climate change, adaptation and mitigation, including relevant aspects of the energy system. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5.6

Chapter 5.6: Options for delivering sustainable approaches - Synthesis DOI:

Ricketts, T. H., Herrero, M., Smith, P., van Huysen, T. L., Alonso Roldán, V., Barrios, E., Dasgupta, P., DeClerck, F., Kumar, R., McFarlane, R. A., Paukert, C., and Singh, P. K. (2024). Chapter 5.6: Options for delivering sustainable approaches – Synthesis. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Options for delivering sustainable approaches to public and private finance for biodiversity-related elements of the nexus DOI:

Ley, D., Vause, J., Pengue, W. A., Cavanagh, C. J., Eriksen, S. H., Kharrazi, A., Pacheco, A., Ahmed, I., Cisneros-Montemayor, A., De Palma, A., Glavovic, B. C., Iiyama, M., King-Okumu. C., Platais, G. H., Reda, F., Sangha, K. K., Schumacher, K., Tormáné Kovács, E., and Wong, G. Y. (2024). Chapter 6. Options for delivering sustainable approaches to public and private finance for biodiversity-related elements of the nexus. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Harrison, P. A., McElwee, P. D., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Summary and synthesis of options, knowledge and technology gaps and capacity development DOI:

McElwee, P. D., Sitas, N., Ley, D., Glavovic, B. C., Herrero, M., Biber-Freudenberger, L., Campbell, D., Cavanagh, C. J., Cherubini, F., Dasgupta, P., Eriksen, S. H., Harrison, P. A., Jarvis, R. M., Kuiken, T., Luque, S., Lynch, A. J., Mangalagiu, D., McFarlane, R. A., Phang, S. C., Prist, P. R., Rounsevell, M. D. A., Samoilys, M., Sangha, K. K., Selomane, O., Sietz, D., Smith, P., Spierenburg, M., Vallet, A., Williams, D. R., and Xie, L. (2024). Chapter 7: Summary and synthesis of options, knowledge and technology gaps and capacity development. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. McElwee, P. D., Harrison, P. A., and van Huysen, T. L. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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IV. Invasive Alien Species Assessment

Full report

Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2023). Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Summary for Policymakers

Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2023). Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., Renard Truong, T., Bacher, S., Galil, B. S., Hulme, P. E., Ikeda, T., Sankaran, K. V., McGeoch, M. A., Meyerson, L. A., Nuñez, M. A., Ordonez, A., Rahlao, S. J., Schwindt, E., Seebens, H., Sheppard, A. W., and Vandvik, V. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Introducing biological invasions and the IPBES thematic assessment of invasive alien species and their control DOI:

Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., Renard Truong, T., Lipinskaya, T., and Vicente, J. R. (2023). Chapter 1: Introducing biological invasions and the IPBES thematic assessment of invasive alien species and their control. In: Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Trends and status of alien and invasive alien species DOI:

Seebens, H., Meyerson, L. A., Rahlao, S. J., Lenzner, B., Tricarico, E., Aleksanyan, A., Courchamp, F., Keskin, E., Saeedi, H., Tawake, A., and Pyšek, P. (2023). Chapter 2: Trends and status of alien and invasive alien species. In: Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Drivers affecting biological invasions DOI:

Hulme, P. E., Ikeda, T., Vandvik, V., Blanchard, R., Camacho-Cervantes, M., Herrera, I., Koyama, A., Morales, C. L., Munishi, L. K., Pallewatta, P. K. T. N. S., Per, E., Pergl, J., Ricciardi, A., and Xavier, R. O. (2023). Chapter 3: Drivers affecting biological invasions. In: Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Impacts of invasive alien species on nature, nature’s contributions to people, and good quality of life DOI:

Bacher, S., Galil, B. S., Nuñez, M. A., Ansong, M., Cassey, P., Dehnen-Schmutz, K., Fayvush, G., Hiremath, A. J., Ikegami, M., Martinou, A. F., McDermott, S. M., Preda, C., Vilà, M., Weyl, O. L. F., Fernandez, R. D., and Ryan-Colton, E. (2023). Chapter 4: Impacts of invasive alien species on nature, nature’s contributions to people, and good quality of life. In: Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Management; challenges, opportunities and lessons learned DOI:

Sankaran, K. V., Schwindt, E., Sheppard, A. W., Foxcroft, L. C., Vanderhoeven, S., Egawa, C., Peacock, L., Castillo, M. L., Zenni, R. D., Müllerová, J., González-Martínez, A. I., Bukombe, J. K., Wanzala, W., and Mangwa, D. C. (2023). Chapter 5: Management; challenges, opportunities and lessons learned. In: Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Governance and policy options for the management of biological invasions DOI:

McGeoch, M. A., Ordonez, A., Howard, P. L., Groom, Q. J., Shrestha, B. B., Fernandez, M., Brugnoli, E., Bwalya, B., Byun, C., Ksenofontov, S., Ojaveer, H., Simberloff, D., Mungi, N. A., and Rono, B. (2023). Chapter 6: Governance and policy options for the management of biological invasions. In: Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Roy, H. E., Pauchard, A., Stoett, P., and Renard Truong, T. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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V. Sustainable Use Assessment

Full report

Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2022). Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Summary for Policymakers

Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2022). Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., Kieling, D., Balachander, G., Barron, E. S., Chaudhary, R. P., Gasalla, M., Halmy, M., Hicks, C., Park, M. S., Parlee, B., Rice, J., Ticktin, T., and Tittensor, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 1

Chapter 1. Setting the scene DOI:

Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Hallosserie, A., Michaud-Lopez, C. E., Parma, A., St. Martin, K., and Stockland, H. (2022). Chapter 1: Setting the scene. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 2

Chapter 2. Conceptualizing the sustainable use of wild species DOI:

Rice, J., Ticktin, T., Díaz -Reviriego, I., Furukawa, T., Gandiwa, E., Lavadinović, V., Margayan, L., Pascua, P., Sathyapalan, J. Akachuku, C., and Hallosserie, A. (2022). Chapter 2: Conceptualizing the sustainable use of wild species. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 3

Chapter 3. Status of and trends in the use of wild species and its implications for wild species, the environment and people DOI:

Barron, E. S., Chaudhary, R. P., Carvalho Ribeiro, S., Gilman, E., Hess, J., Hilborn, R., Katz, E., Kigonya, R., Masski, H., Mesa Castellanos, L. I., Mograbi, P. J., Nayak, P. K., Queiroz, H., Sidorovich, A., Silvano, R. A. M., Zeng, Y, Djagoun, C., and Danner, M. C. (2022). Chapter 3: Status of and trends in the use of wild species and its implications for wild species, the environment and people. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 4

Chapter 4. The drivers of the sustainable use of wild species DOI:

Balachander, G., Halmy, M. W. A., Parlee, B., Biggs, D., Chatakonda, M., Cisneros-Montemayor, A. M., Cormier-Salem, M-C., Dasgupta, R., Devkota, S., Diniz, J., Elfaki, A., Hiwasaki, L., Lichtenstein, G., Richter, A., Shah, M. A., Shanley, P., Shrestha, U. B., Lee, T. M., Bayarbaatar, B., and Kieling, D. (2022). Chapter 4: The drivers of the sustainable use of wild species. In: Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 5

Chapter 5. Future scenarios of sustainable use of wild species DOI:

Gasalla, M., Tittensor, D. P., Kok, K., Archer, E., Borokini, I., Halouani, G., Matias, D. M., Mbiba, M., Milner-Gulland, E. J., Pacheco, P., Fabricius, C., and Kieling, D. (2022). Chapter 5: Future scenarios of sustainable use of wild species. In Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 6

Chapter 6. Policy options for governing sustainable use of wild species DOI:

Park, M. S., Hicks, C. C., Wynberg R., Mosig Reidl, P., Dhyani S., Islas, C. A., Raab, K., Avila-Foucat, V. S., Parma, A., Kolding, J., Shkaruba, A., Skandrani, Z., and Danner, M. C. (2022). Chapter 6: Policy options for governing sustainable use of wild species. In Thematic Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Fromentin, J. M., Emery, M. R., Donaldson, J., Danner, M. C., Hallosserie, A., and Kieling, D. (eds.). IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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VI. Values Assessment

Full report

Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2022). Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Summary for Policymakers

IPBES (2022). Summary for Policymakers of the Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Pascual, U., Balvanera, P., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., González-Jiménez, D., Anderson, C. B., Athayde, S., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Jacobs, S., Kelemen, E., Kumar, R., Lazos, E., Martin, A., Mwampamba, T. H., Nakangu, B., O'Farrell, P., Raymond, C. M., Subramanian, S. M., Termansen, M., Van Noordwijk, M., and Vatn, A. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The role of the values of nature and valuation for addressing the biodiversity crisis and navigating towards more just and sustainable futures DOI:

Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., Lliso, B., Monroy, A. S., Guibrunet, L., Anderson, C. B., Athayde, S., Barton, D. N., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Jacobs, S., Kelemen, E., Kumar, R., Lazos, E., Martin, A., Mwampamba, T. H., Nakangu, B., O'Farrell, P., Raymond, C. M., Subramanian, S. M., Termansen, M., Van Noordwijk, M., Vatn, A., Contreras, V., and González-Jiménez, D. (2022). Chapter 1: The role of the values of nature and valuation for addressing the biodiversity crisis and navigating towards more just and sustainable futures. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Michael, C., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Conceptualizing the diverse values of nature and their contributions to people DOI:

Anderson, C. B., Athayde, S., Raymond, C. M., Vatn, A., Arias, P., Gould, R. K., Kenter, J., Muraca, B., Sachdeva, S., Samakov, A., Zent, E., Lenzi, D., Murali, R., Amin, A., and Cantú-Fernández, M. (2022). Chapter 2: Conceptualizing the diverse values of nature and their contributions to people. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 3

Chapter 3: The potential of valuation DOI:

Termansen, M., Jacobs, S., Mwampamba, T. H., Ahn, S., Castro, A., Dendoncker, N., Ghazi, H., Gundimeda, H., Huambachano, M., Lee, H., Mukherjee, N., Nemogá, G. R., Palomo, I., Pandit, R., Schaafsma, M., Ngouhouo, J., Choi, A., Filyushkina, A., Hernández-Blanco, M., Contreras, V., and González-Jiménez, D. (2022). Chapter 3: The potential of valuation. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Value expression in decision-making DOI:

Barton, D. N., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Lazos, E., Van Noordwijk, M., Engel, S., Girvan, A., Hahn, T., Leimona, B., Lele, S., Niamir, A., Özkaynak, B., Pawlowska-Mainville, A., Muradian, R., Ungar, P., Aydin, C., Iranah, P., Nelson, S., Cantú-Fernández, M., and González-Jiménez, D. (2022). Chapter 4: Value expression in decision-making. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Christie, M., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The role of diverse values of nature in visioning and transforming towards just and sustainable futures DOI:

Martin, A., O'Farrell, P., Kumar, R., Eser, U., Faith, D.P., Gomez-Baggethun, E., Harmackova, Z., Horcea-Milcu, A.I., Merçon, J., Quaas, M., Rode, J., Rozzi, R., Sitas, N., Yoshida, Y., Ochieng, T.N., Koessler, A.K., Lutti, N., Mannetti, L., and Arroyo-Robles, G. (2022). Chapter 5: The role of diverse values of nature in visioning and transforming towards just and sustainable futures. In: Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Michael, C., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Policy options and capacity development to operationalize the inclusion of diverse values of nature in decision-making DOI:

Kelemen, E., Subramanian, S., Nakangu, B., Islar, M., Kosmus, M., Nuesiri, E., Porter-Bolland, L., De Vos, A., Amaruzaman, S., Yiu, E., and Arroyo, G. (2022). Chapter 6: Policy options and capacity development to operationalize the inclusion of diverse values of nature in decision-making. In: Methodological assessment of the diverse values and valuation of nature of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Balvanera, P., Pascual, U., Michael, C., Baptiste, B., and González-Jiménez, D. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

VII. Global Assessment

Full report

Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 1-1082). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Summary for Policymakers

Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services DOI:

IPBES (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. XIV-LXI). Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondízio, E. S., Ngo, H. T., Guèze, M., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K. A., Butchart, S. H. M., Chan, K. M. A., Garibaldi, L. A., Ichii, K., Liu, J., Subramanian, S. M., Midgley, G. F., Miloslavich, P., Molnár, Z., Obura, D., Pfaff, A., Polasky, S., Purvis, A., Razzaque, J., Reyers, B., Roy Chowdhury, R., Shin, Y. J., Visseren-Hamakers, I. J., Willis, K. J., and Zayas C.N. (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Assessing a planet in transformation: Rationale and approach of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service DOI:

Brondízio, E. S., Díaz, S., Settele, J., Ngo, H. T., Guèze, M., Aumeeruddy-Thomas, Y., Bai, X., Geschke, A., Molnár, Z., Niamir, A., Pascual, U., Simcock, A., and Jaureguiberry, P. (2019). Chapter 1: Assessing a planet in transformation: Rationale and approach of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 1-48). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2.1. Status and Trends – Drivers of Change DOI:

Balvanera, P., Pfaff, A., Viña, A., García-Frapolli, E., Merino, L., Minang, P. A., Nagabhatla, N., Hussain, S. A., and Sidorovich, A. A. (2019) Chapter 2.1. Status and Trends – Drivers of Change. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 49-200). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2.2

Chapter 2.2. Status and Trends – Nature DOI:

Purvis, A., Molnar, Z., Obura, D., Ichii, K., Willis, K., Chettri, N., Dulloo, E., Hendry, A., Gabrielyan, B., Gutt, J., Jacob, U., Keskin, E., Niamir, A., Öztürk, B., Salimov, R., and Jaureguiberry, P. (2019). Chapter 2.2. Status and Trends – Nature. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 201-308). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 2.3

Chapter 2.3. Status and Trends – Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP) DOI:

Brauman, K. A., Garibaldi, L. A., Polasky, S., Zayas, C., Aumeeruddy-Thomas, Y., Brancalion, P., DeClerck, F., Mastrangelo, M., Nkongolo, N., Palang, H., Shannon, L., Shrestha, U. B., and Verma, M. (2019). Chapter 2.3. Status and Trends – Nature’s Contributions to People (NCP). In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 309-384). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., Ngo, and H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 3

Chapter 3. Assessing progress towards meeting major international objectives related to nature and nature's contributions to people DOI:

Butchart, S. H. M., Miloslavich, P., Reyers, B., Subramanian, S. M., Adams, C., Bennett, E., Czúcz, B., Galetto, L., Galvin, K., Reyes-García, V., Gerber, L. R., Bekele, T., Jetz, W., Kosamu, I. B. M. K., Palomo, M. G., Panahi, M., Selig, E. R., Singh, G. S., Tarkhnishvili, D., Xu, H., Lynch, A. J., Mwampamba, T. H., and Samakov, A. (2019). Chapter 3. Assessing progress towards meeting major international objectives related to nature and nature’s contributions to people. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 385-598). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Plausible futures of nature, its contributions to people and their good quality of life DOI:

Shin, Y. J., Arneth, A., Roy Chowdhury, R., Midgley, G. F., Leadley, P., Agyeman Boafo, Y., Basher, Z., Bukvareva, E., Heinimann, A., Horcea-Milcu, A. I., Kindlmann, P., Kolb, M., Krenova, Z., Oberdorff, T., Osano, P., Palomo, I., Pichs Madruga, R., Pliscoff, P., Rondinini, C., Saito, O., Sathyapalan, J., and Yue, T. (2019). Chapter 4: Plausible futures of nature, its contributions to people and their good quality of life. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 599-766). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 5

Chapter 5. Pathways towards a Sustainable Future DOI:

Chan, K. M. A., Agard, J., Liu, J., Dutra De Aguiar, A. P., Armenteras Pascual, D., Boedhihartono, A. K., Cheung, W. W. L., Hashimoto, S., Hernández-Pedraza, G. C., Hickler, T., Jetzkowitz, J., Kok, M., Murray-Hudson, M., O’Farrell, P., Satterfield, T., Saysel, A. K., Seppelt, R., Strassburg, B., Xue, D., Selomane, O., Balint, L., and A. Mohamed. (2019). Chapter 5. Pathways towards a Sustainable Future. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 767-874). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

Download the . Download the .

Chapter 6

Chapter 6. Options for Decision Makers DOI:

Razzaque, J., Visseren-Hamakers, I. J., McElwee, P., Rusch, G. M., Kelemen, E., Turnhout, E., Williams, M. J., Gautam, A. P., Fernandez-Llamazares, A., Chan, I., Gerber, L. R., Islar, M., Karim, S., Lim, M., Liu, J., Lui, G., Mohammed, A., Mungatana, E., and Muradian R. (2019). Chapter 6. Options for Decision Makers. In: Global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (pp. 875-1028). Brondízio, E. S., Settele, J., Díaz, S., and Ngo, H. T. (eds). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. DOI:

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Part 5 - File formats

Technical Guideline Series

Prepared by Joy Kumagai - Technical Support Unit (TSU) of Knowledge and Data Reviewed by Aidin Niamir - Head of the Technical Support Unit on Knowledge and Data For any inquires please contact [email protected]

Version: 1.1 Last Updated: 15 July 2022

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6839037

I. Executive Summary

This technical guideline is for all IPBES experts and focuses on recommended file formats for IPBES with open or mostly open standards. To summarize briefly:

Table 1: Recommendations for file formats

* While we are aiming to use open or mostly open formats, currently DOCX is widely used by the IPBES community and thus is still acceptable, although for preservation a PDF version of the DOCX file should also be added to the repository.

More details on these formats follow below. If you have any suggestions on further content or file format types you would like to see covered please contact us.

II. Geospatial Files

Spatial data generally fall into either vector or raster data. Vector data consists of points, lines, and polygons that are based on point locations. Raster data is grid-based data, such as pixels on a screen or an image. Raster data is either continuous or discrete, for example a temperature dataset is continuous or a land cover dataset with classes is discrete. For more information on these geospatial data types and a general introduction to geospatial concepts please visit . Additionally, for a complete list of geospatial formats please reference .

For each type of spatial data, this guideline will show examples of how to export and read the information. Please download the following data using this code to follow the examples.

A. Vector Data

i. GeoPackage

We recommend using the GeoPackage format for storing geospatial information. This file format is new and less widely used, but a completely open format for storing geospatial data. As stated on “GeoPackage is an open, standards-based, platform-independent, portable, self-describing, compact format for transferring geospatial information.” A GeoPackage can store both vector and raster data (as tiles) and can have multiple layers per single file. The format allows for multiple geometry types per file, so one can store both point and polygon data within the same file.

A GeoPackage is ideal for encoding geospatial data when size and power are limited such as within a mobile device and is implemented in an SQLite database. It is slightly lighter in size than a shapefile, usually around 1.1-1.3x smaller and there is not limit on file size.

We generally encourage everybody to use the GeoPackage format because of these reasons. Existing shapefiles can be converted by using the package stars in R and

Some drawbacks are that the format is relatively young and the raster support in R is limited. It is very difficult to write multiband raster files using the common packages in R.

If you are interested in understanding all of the file types and contents in a GeoPackage detailed information on the structure of a GeoPackage can be found .

To export a geopackage the following code and the sf package can be used:

Next, you can read a geopackage using the simple st_read() function

ii. Shapefile

A shapefile is the most widely used vector type spatial data format and is recommended although it is not ideal and needs be used correctly. The geometry of a feature is stored as a shape comprising of a set of coordinates. Each feature is associated with a list of attributes within a table. Shapefiles can be used with almost all geospatial software and are well supported by open source software libraries. It was developed and currently regulated by ESRI, a commercial company. More information on shapefiles can be found on .

A shapefile consists of multiple files that together are read by a computer program which specifies geometry of features, projection, and metadata of the dataset.

All files within one shapefile share the same file name with different extensions. These files can not be separated from each other and should be zipped into a single archive when being transferred. The mandatory and some optional extensions are included below but more are described on the ESRI website .

.shp - Mandatory. Contains the geometry for each feature - each record describes a shape with a list of its vertices
.shx - Mandatory. Stores the index of the feature geometry
.dbf - Mandatory. Dataset that stores the attribute information of features with a one-to-one relationship between geometry and attribute rows

Some drawbacks to using shapefiles are the following:

Not a completely open format
Lacks support for UNICODE character strings, therefore limiting the use of non-English languages
Consists of multiple files which can easily be separated

To export and read a shapefile, the sf package can also be used.

iii. GeoJSON

Another vector format if the recommended formats are not possible is GeoJSON. GeoJSON is a simple open standard geospatial format that also represents features and associated attributes. This format is commonly used in web-based mapping. It is based on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and the standard format uses a geographic coordinate reference system, WGS 1984. Unlike shapefiles, it was not developed by a commercial company, but an internet working group of developers and thus is openly documented.

We recommend only using this format when data is simple points and lines as it is text based. Since it is text based, it is easy for humans to read directly and for machines to parse through and almost all GIS programs used for applications on the web can write and read GeoJSON data.

An important drawback worth mentioning is that it lacks support for projections. Additionally, there is no built-in support for embedding rich metadata about the dataset as a whole. Therefore, when using GeoJSON, provide the additional structured metadata with the json file so that the data is interoperable including an additional metadata file which specifies the projection and map datum.

More technical information can be found on the Sustainability of Digital Formats website which supports the US Library of Congress Collections.

To export and read a GeoJSON file the following code can be used. The option RFC7946 = YES needs to be used when exporting as it is a more recent and strict standard for GeoJSON.

iv. KML/KMZ

KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is a geospatial publishing format that enables easy visualization. The format is used primarily in the Google Earth Interface. The KML format focuses on visualization and allows one to encode what information to show and how to show it including annotation of images and maps and supports 3D textured models. KML supports display of rich data through icons and captions and can control the users view point directing where to look.

KML files can be created and edited on the google earth interface or can be drafted in an XML or simple text editor. When KML files are shared usually they are compressed and zipped into KMZ files. There are various ways to package a KML file, and thus we recommend other formats for storing or transferring geospatial data.

KML only uses one coordinate reference system and is not well suited for delivering large quantities of data.

More information on KML is available from Google.

To export a KML file from R, the following code can be used. First, the projection needs to be checked as KML only supports WGS84.

Next, the same functions st_write() and st_read() can be used

B. Raster Data

i. GeoTIFF and Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF

Raster data can come in a variety of formats such as png, tiff, or jpeg, commonly used for images, but here we focus on geospatial data formats. We recommend GeoTIFF for geospatial raster data. GeoTIFF is a formatted TIFF 6.0 raster file that embeds cartographic information into the raster image as tags. The format was originally developed as a format to distribute satellite or aerial photography imagery and is widely used.

There are many benefits to using the GeoTIFF format. There is strong software support in the form of open source libraries and many commercial and open GIS and spatial data analysis software products support reading and writing GeoTIFF data. It is highly interoperable, used worldwide, can store multiband raster data, and supported for many years.

The tags of GeoTIFF files, called tif tags should include the following metadata: extent, resolution, datum, projection (CRS), and values that represent missing data. These tags are incredibly important and are how programs recognize the spatial coverage and projection of the raster data.

GeoTIFF is not suitable for storing complex multi-dimensional data structures and has a size limit of 4GB.

More information can be found on from the NASA standards and references webpage.

To export a GeoTIFF file, the following code can be used with the raster package.

To read a GeoTIFF raster, just one line of code is needed

Recently, a format called, , has become increasingly popular which is a regular GeoTIFF file aimed at being hosted on a HTTP file server. This standard was developed in 2016 within the Open Source Geospatial Foundation project. The format enables efficient workflows on the cloud by utilizing tiling and overviews. It allows for efficient imagery data display and access through HTTP GET range requests, so end-users can just use the parts of the GeoTIFF they need. A cloud optimized GeoTIFF is larger in size than a normal GeoTIFF, but it enables faster access on a server.

If you are interested in exporting Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs, one option is to use the write_tif function from the gdalcubes package described

ii. Geopackage (raster)

We recommend using the GeoPackage format for storing raster data as well. Raster data is stored in a tile-based pyramid structure within the GeoPackage, therefore the imagery or raster information is stored at multiple resolutions. The parameters of the tiles can be set when writing the layer to the Geopackage. This tile-based pyramid structure is useful when handling a GeoPackage on a small device, as the appropriate resolution can be displayed based on the zoom level and screen size.

More information on how the tiles are stored within the GeoPackage can be found

Please note that in R, currently support for writing multiband rasters in a GeoPackage is limited.

To write and read a GeoPackage with a raster layer within it, the following code can be used with the package stars

iii. NetCDF

Another option for storing geospatial raster data is NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) if a GeoTIFF will not suit your purpose or you were given data in NetCDF format. NetCDFs are often used for climate and large scientific raster data files, especially for storing multidimensional scientific data. NetCDF is used by a large community and is self-describing, portable, scalable, appenable, archivable, and is considered a standard. It is in the public domain, and thus open, well documented, and actively developed and maintained. NetCDF files support multidimensional arrays with multiple unlimited appendable dimensions but is not as commonly used as GeoTIFFs.

Some limitations to NetCDFs are that they are not as user-friendly to work with especially in R, they do not support nested structures, and no real compression is supported.

NetCDF was developed and maintained at Unidata. On their website they provide tutorials and documentation. A quick factsheet with more information is available .

R is able to read and write netCDF files using the package ncdf4. For a full tutorial on how to read and write netCDF files, please refer to

We will now go through a very simple example starting with formatting and exporting NetCDF data adapted from and finally importing the netCDF we create. We will use the base R volcano dataset.

Next, we will store the elevations and grid dimensions in variables.

We will now define the spatial dimensions of the data (lat / long) and then use ncvar_def to define a variable in the netCDF file that will hold the elevation data.

We will now create the netCDF file and add the variables into the file. At this step, one can add additional metadata such as title, affiliated institution, source, references, etc.

Finally, close the file, which writes the data to disk.

Now, let’s move onto opening the netCDF file we just created.

Next, we will extract the coordinate variables and elevation variable.

Now, one can create a plot from the netcdf file.

C. Resources and useful R packages for handling spatial data

For more information on these geospatial data types and other types can be found here as well:

While information on the various formats for spatial data are incredibly important to understand when using and sharing geospatial data, we would also like to recommend a few packages for handling spatial data in R.

The sf package is used to handle vector data, while the terra and raster packages are often used to handle raster data. The packages sf and raster have been used throughout these technical guidelines. For an overview on these packages, I recommend the vignettes on for each of the packages linked below.

Finally, here is a table summarizing the recommended r packages for each data type with links to more guides on how to read, convert, and write in R between these formats:

Table 2: Recommendations for handling these file formats in R

* Important note: The commonly used package raster will be replaced by the new package terra as rgdal, one of the key packages it uses, will be retired in 2024. There are many more resources available online to guide people on how to use these packages than those mentioned.

III. Tabular Files

The rest of this technical guideline will go through recommended file formats for tabular, textual files, and image files with less detailed information.

i. Structure

Often when one pictures data, they don’t think of complex geometries, but rather tabular data such as a list of field sites and associated variables recorded in an table or a survey responses in an excel sheet. Tabular data is data structured into rows and columns and can be wide or long.

Wide data is where each different variable is listed in a separate column, while long data is structured so a row is one observation, therefore one column contains all values, and another column contains the variable. Often with small amounts of data, a wide table can be more easily interpreted by humans, while long data is often required for running statistical analysis in computer programs. The use of the long format is highly recommended!

Table 3: Example of wide data

Table 4: Example of long data

We recommend the following open file formats for tabular data which does not include Excel sheets.

ii. CSV / TXT

A CSV file (Comma Separated Variable) file is a text based data file that describes tabular data. Each row is one line, and the columns are separated by commas.

It is widely used as a data exchange format and highly recommended. If your tabular data do not contain commas, than a CSV file is the recommended choice. If your data do contain commas, such as survey responses, one can delineate columns in a TXT file based on tab’s or other characters such as semicolons.

A CSV file can be created from an excel sheet easily described , written in a txt file, or created in R or other computer programming languages. Text files are highly interoperable and can be imported and exported by almost any software designed for storing or manipulating data.

To export a table as a CSV file or tab delineated file in R, follow and adapt this code:

IV. Textual Files

For files mostly comprising of text, such as transcripts and survey questions, we recommend .txt, .pdf, or .docx files which are explained in more detail below. While .docx are not open and therefore not ideal, currently the IPBES communitiy relies on them heavily and thus this format is still recommended. When using .docx, also export the document to a pdf when submitting the data to a repository.

i. TXT

A .txt file, is a plain text file that just contains text, therefore it is human-readable and interoperable. This file can be opened in any text editor and almost all operating systems come with text editors that allow you to easily create, open and edit text files. There is no limitation on the size of contents. The default character set of text files is ASCII, but they can also be saved in Unicode format, such as UTF-8 which is acceptable.

ii. PDF

A PDF (Portable Document Format) was originally created by Adobe back in the 1990s, but was released as a open format in 2008. PDFs allow one to view documents easily independent of application software and operating system that is why presentations are often shared in PDF format as opposed to a powerpoint file. The PDF file format has the ability to contain not only text, but images, hyperlinks, form-fields, digital signatures, attachments, and other information. PDFs are very suitable for long-term storage of documents, as they are independent of application software.

More information on the PDF file format can be found .

iii. DOCX

DOCX files are Microsoft Word documents. This format is not open and is not interoperable. While TXT and PDF files are preferred to DOCX files, the IPBES community relies heavily on DOCX files and thus it is still acceptable to use this format. In 2007, the original standard DOC file format was updated to a new standard DOCX file, where the addition of the X stands for XML. When using .docx, also export the document to a pdf when submitting the data to a repository.

If you interested, more technical information can be found .

V. Image Files

There are many different image file formats that one can choose from when exporting images. We recommend commonly used formats that are open and interoperable, such as SVG or PNG, but other formats may also be appropriate depending on the use case. Similar to geospatial information, there are two image file types vector and raster. For a more comprehensive list of image file formats please see

Vector formats are superior to raster formats for most images such as line drawings, including plots, graphs, or logos. Vector formats will never look pixelated, as they are not based on pixels, but rather mathematical forumlas that define geometric objects such as polygons, lines, and curves. Vector images are more malleable than raster images, smaller in size, faster to display, and perfectly scalable.

Raster images are based on pixels with a defined resolution and are the preferred format for photographs or non-line art images. One of the largest considerations for raster image files is resolution. Resolution is often reported in the units DPI, dots per inch. As resolution increases, clarity and the size of the file increases. The standard for displaying images on websites is 72dpi, for printing it is 300dpi or higher, and for submitting figures for publications it is 600dpi.

Vector Image Files

i. SVG

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a vector image format, which uses XML text to specify lines and color. SVG is a great option and highly recommended for graphs, logos, and illustrations, especially for publishing materials on the internet. It is supported by all major browsers, but most default image editors do not support SVG. It should not be used to save photographs.

To export a SVG file from R, one can use this base code and add additional arguments such as height, width, point size, to the svg() function.

ii. EPS

EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) was created by Adobe in 1992 and is based on Postscript rather than XML. EPS was originally intended for a print workflow not an online workflows and is no longer in development. EPS file format is recommended and better than SVG for high-quality document printing, printed logos, and marketing materials.

To export a EPS file from R, one can use this base code and add additional arguments to the postscript() function.

iii. PDF

PDFs (Portable Document Files) mentioned previously under the textual files section can also be saved as a vector file. Vector formated PDFs allow one to easily select objects and are preferred to raster formatted PDFs. PDFs can have a mix of vector and raster content, but when exported from R, the graphics will be in vector format. If scanned, the PDF will be in raster format.

To export a figure as a PDF file from R, one can use this base code and change and add additional arguments to the pdf() function.

Raster Image Files

i. PNG

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) files are a type of raster file format that supports lossless data compression and has no copyright limitations. We generally recommend PNG files for storage and sharing images online. The lossless compression means that there is no loss in quality each time it is opened and saved again. PNG only supports the RGB color space and not CMYK, and does not support animations.

To export a PNG file from R, one can use this based code and change and add additional arguments to the png() funciton.

ii. JPEG / JPG

In comparison, JPEG (or JPG) files are raster files that are often used online for displaying images as they are fast to load. It has lossy compression which means each time it is saved it reduces in file size but also in quality. We do not recommend JPEG files for long term storage, except in the case of images which come from e.g. cameras as nothing is gained in converting an original JPEG into a PNG.

To export a jpeg file from R, one can use this base code and change and add additional arguments to the jpeg() argument, although we discourage exporting graphs in jpeg.

iii. TIFF

Another option is TIFF. A TIFF (Tagged Image File) is a raster file that also supports lossless compression. We do not recommend using this tile type on websites as it is slow to load due to its large size and has limited browser support, but it is recommended for long term storage or publications. If there are no concerns about losing embedded metadata and tags, in general, it makes sense to convert a TIFF image to PNG as it reduces the size and is lossless.

To export a TIFF image file from R, one can use this base code and change and add additional arguments to the tiff() function, although we discourage exporting graphs in tiff.

Thank you for your time. If you have any suggestions on further content or file format types you would like to see covered please contact us at the technical support unit at .

IPBES ICT guide

Data and Knowledge Management

Policy

hashtagObjectives

hashtagPrinciples

hashtagHighlights

hashtagContact

Organisation of Work

Technical Guideline Series

Part 10 - Contributing Authors Template Email considering ILK

hashtagContributing Authors Template Email considering ILK and the data and knowledge management policy

Citations of IPBES Assessments

Business and Biodiversity Assessment

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hashtagSummary for Policymakers

hashtagChapter 1

hashtagChapter 2

hashtagChapter 3

hashtagChapter 4

hashtagChapter 5

hashtagChapter 6

Transformative Change Assessment

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Assessment Directories

Underlying bibliographic data and research materials of the IPBES assessment reports

IPBES Ontology and Linked Open Data

Further Guidance

Software

hashtagZotero

FAIR and CARE

Literature search

Retracted references

hashtagWhat are retracted publications?

Use of AI

Repositories

GitHub

hashtagIntroduction

ORCID

hashtagORCID

hashtagWhy we strongly recommend the registration and use of an ORCID account

hashtagHow to register

hashtagInform secretariat of your ORCID

hashtagLink your work

Reference Manager

Literature access

Research4Life

hashtagWhat is Research4Life?

Open access literature

hashtagJournals

hashtagList of other disciplinary repositories

hashtagBrowser extensions

hashtagReferences

Mailing and messaging

Slack

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Collaboration

Troubleshooting Teams

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Website

TRACK

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TEST

Content management

Content creation

Content administration

Policy

hashtagObjectives

hashtagPrinciples

hashtagHighlights

hashtagContact

Content creation

TEST

Organisation of Work

Citations of IPBES Assessments

Use of AI

Underlying bibliographic data and research materials of the IPBES assessment reports

Technical Guideline Series

FAIR and CARE

Research4Life

hashtagWhat is Research4Life?

Objectives

Principles

Highlights

Contact

Contributing Authors Template Email considering ILK and the data and knowledge management policy

Full report

Summary for Policymakers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Full report

Zotero

What are retracted publications?

Introduction

ORCID

Why we strongly recommend the registration and use of an ORCID account

How to register

Inform secretariat of your ORCID

Link your work

What is Research4Life?

Journals

List of other disciplinary repositories

Browser extensions

References

Join a Slack workspace

Clear the Teams client cache

Submit an entry

Objectives

Principles

Highlights

Contact

What is Research4Life?

What are retracted publications?

Who is eligible?

What do I need to do to register my institution?

Does IPBES grant access to Research4Life?

How to identify retracted publications?

The handling of retracted publications

ORCID

Why we strongly recommend the registration and use of an ORCID account

How to register

Inform secretariat of your ORCID

Link your work

Contributing Authors Template Email considering ILK and the data and knowledge management policy

Full report

Summary for Policymakers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Journals

List of other disciplinary repositories

Browser extensions

References

Full report

Zotero

Introduction

Join a Slack workspace

Submit an entry