Month: January 2020

 

2020 will be the year of biodiversity! The biodiversity crisis has become central in the international agenda after the publication by the IPBES of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in 2019. 2020 will see major events with the IUCN world conservation congress to be held in Marseille in June and the COP15 Biodiversity in Kunming, among many others.

 

Biodiversity synthesis centres have fueled this dynamic by promoting the scientiflc synthesis on biodiversity and helping researchers to adapt to the exponential increase in available data and to the globalization of scientiflc ecology. We can be proud of what have been achieved but are also concerned about what still need to be done and how we will contribute to assess the knowledge gaps on biodiversity.

 

2019 have been a year of transition for the CESAB, we have moved to Montpellier and have created a new ecosystem, integrating many new partners, and experiencing new tools to promote biodiversity synthesis. We have launched joint calls with other synthesis centers (German sDiv, Canadian CIEE) and French scientiflc actors (AFB, Labex Cemeb), have organized a training course for young scientists on reproductibility in ecological data science and held an international conference on large scale conservation in Montpellier. This has been possible thanks to the help of the incredible FRB team dedicated to CESAB and more generally of the FRB, and to the dynamism of our many ongoing working groups.

 

2020 will be the year we consolidate this ecosystem, open new ambitious calls for synthesis groups and amplify the momentum. We now have the trust and support from our founding members and partners and are trying to work together to make CESAB contribute even more to the biodiversity synthesis!

 

Best wishes for this new year.

Nicolas Mouquet