The International Day for Biological Diversity is celebrated every year on 22 May, commemorating the adoption of the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992. The 2025 edition theme “Harmony with nature and sustainable development” focuses the world’s attention on the linkages between the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Goals and Targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) as two universal agendas that must be pursued in tandem in the spirit of the recently adopted Pact for the Future.
To celebrate the 2025 edition of International Biodiversity Day and the importance of advancing action to tackle biodiversity loss, the key findings of two landmark scientific reports adopted and launched at the 11th Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Plenary in Windhoek, Namibia, in December 2024, will be presented to international Geneva.
The IPBES Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report – offers decision-makers around the world the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change. The report is the product of three years of work by 165 leading international experts from 57 countries from all regions of the world. It finds that existing actions to address these challenges fail to tackle the complexity of interlinked problems and result in inconsistent governance.
The IPBES 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 – also known as the Transformative Change Report – builds on the 2019 IPBES Global Assessment Report, which found that the only way to achieve global development goals is through transformative change, and on the 2022 IPBES Values Assessment Report. Prepared over three years by more than 100 leading experts from 42 countries from all regions of the world, the report explains what transformative change is, how it occurs, and how to accelerate it for a just and sustainable world.
Leading authors and experts from key Geneva-based UN institutions and processes invited to join the panel of this event will present the findings of the reports and reflect on how the multilateral system can meet the interconnected challenges that result from the accelerated speed and scale of environmental change and rising inequalities identifies in the assessments.
This event is taking place inside Palais des Nations. Attendance is free for all, but registration is required.