BC3 Press Release:Unai Pascual will be leading the research due to be conducted by the IPBES to explore nature’s values in human well-being
“Unai Pascual will be leading the research due to be conducted by the IPBES to explore nature’s values in human well-being”
- The Basque researcher will be participating as a research co-chair of the research to be conducted worldwide to explore the myriad values that nature contributes towards human well-being.
- Over a three-year period he will be directing the work of 150 international expert researchers and will be presenting their work to the 130 governments participating in the IPBES.
- His appointment to the chair of a major IPBES assessment recognizes the global contribution that this Basque researcher has made towards the field of ecological economy in recent decades.
Unai Pascual – Ikerbasque Professor at BC3
Bilbao. 3 August, 2018
Unai Pascual (Vitoria-Gasteiz, 1973) has recently been appointed co-chair of the IPBES assessment into the values of nature. Promoted by the United Nations Organisation, the IPBES was set up in 2012. Its mission is to offer public policy-making bodies scientific evidence, all kinds of knowledge, working tools and other types of methods designed to improve the situation of nature on the planet, to safeguard natural resources and use them sustainably, because they hold the key to the survival of current and future societies.
From his new position, the Basque researcher Unai Pascual will be directing the work of about 150 experts across the world. The remit of this assessment group will be to explore the myriad of values offered by biodiversity and ecosystem services, because that will enable us to understand the interdisciplinary contributions that nature makes towards individuals, countries and regional economic and social development. The outcome of this work will be hugely valuable in guiding public policies in the creation of relationship models to use natural resources more sustainably.
Besides being a member of the scientific group of the BC3 (Basque Centre for Climate Change), Unai Pascual is an Ikerbasque professor and Senior Associate Research Scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Between 2015 and 2018 Unai Pascual was a member of the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel of the IPBES alongside another 25 leading researchers.
Unai Pascual’s appointment was announced in Frankfurt, because that is where the meeting with 150 top researchers from about 50 countries to approve the IPBES’s report on the “Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” is being held. This research is the most detailed conducted this decade to assess the situation of global biodiversity and the contributions that nature makes towards people. The final result will be announced at the seventh Plenary Meeting to be held in Paris in May 2019.
