SEVERAL members of the biodiversity community were abuzz last week with news that IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform on Science-Policy Advice on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, was being considered for this year's Nobel Peace Prize (NPP), nominated by a senior German government minister and others.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced an extremely deserving winner from within the UN family, the World Food Programme (WFP).
But when one looks at the history of the NPP, I believe there's a very good chance IPBES, which today is just eight years into existence, will be recognised in similar fashion one day.
The NPP has been awarded in 101 of the 120 years since 1901 (no prize for peace was awarded in 19 years). In 2020 and 23 other years it was awarded to an organisation (including a triple winner, the International Red Cross, in 1917, 1944 and 1963).
It has been awarded to UN-related organisations 10 times, including the UN as a whole in 2001 (shared with the then-secretary general Kofi Annan).
In total, the UN and/or its officials have won the NPP in 12 of the 101 years in which it was awarded. In 2001, its centennial year, the selection committee shared an interesting insight, stating that: "For 100 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to strengthen organised cooperation between states. The end of the cold war has at last made it possible for the UN to perform more fully the part it was originally intended to play. Today (it) is at the forefront of efforts to achieve peace and security in the world, and of the international mobilisation aimed at meeting the world's economic, social and environmental challenges."
IPBES, as regular readers know, is the mechanism by which the world's most authoritative experts in biodiversity and ecosystem services inform decisions on policies and measures to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity, on which long-term human well-being and sustainable development depend.
It evolved from a 2005 initiative to create an "International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB)", which in 2008 became IPBES and five years later its first plenary meeting of member states was held in Bonn.
IPBES was modelled on the highly successful Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winner ofthe 2007 NPP in its 19th year of service, an honour shared with former US vice-president Al Gore.
Malaysia has a soft spot for IPBES on several counts. Firstly, when Paris hosted the 2005 conference to launch IMoSEB, our then-prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was one of only four world leaders invited by French president Jacques Chirac to speak at the meeting.
Secondly, as the site of one of the earliest international planning meetings, in November 2008, Kuala Lumpur can claim to be one of IPBES' birthplaces.
Thirdly, I proudly served as the founding chair of IPBES, elected at the first meeting of member nations in 2013, succeeded in 2016 by former IPCC chair Sir Robert Watson of the UK, and in 2019 by Ana María Hernández Salgar of Colombia.
In nominating IPBES, Environment Minister Svenja Schulze pointed to the organisation's "invaluable contribution to world peace and global development".
"In particular, the IPBES report on the state of nature on the planet, the Global Assessment Report, adopted by the international community last year, has already generated greater global awareness and impact than any other environmental report published to date."
That milestone report is best known for warning that without an ecological turnaround, one million species would become extinct in the next few decades.
A previous report, launched at the 6th IPBES plenary in KL in 2016, authoritatively laid out the threats facing pollinator species, responsible for much of the world's food supply.
And a forthcoming report will detail the effects of biodiversity loss on global health, such as the current Covid19 crisis, and recommend remedial next steps.
This year's NPP nomination of IPBES is acknowledgement of the growing realisation that our health, peace and security depend very directly on nature and its contributions to people.
Brian O'Donnell, the director of the Campaign for Nature proclaimed that "the experts at IPBES are heroes for the planet. They have sounded the alarm that nature faces a dire emergency.
In their call for transformational change they put forward a vision where humanity and nature thrive together".
For me, with nearly four decades of experience in international biodiversity governance, the threat posed by the unprecedented and accelerating decline of nature is an existential one for the human race.
These are early years for IPBES. But I believe and sincerely hope the world's biodiversity scientists one day will receive the Nobel Peace Prize—a powerful signal of the supreme importance the issue deserves.
The writer is ambassador and science adviser to the Campaign for Nature, a former science adviser to the UN secretary-general, and founding chair of IPBES