The COP16 Biodiversity talks underway in Colombia are augmented by Elsevier’s new report on leading regions producing relevant research.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

‘To Halt and Reverse Nature Loss’

The next United Nations Climate Change Conference is COP29 and is set to run November 11 to 22 in Azerbaijan, centered in Baku.

COP16, now it its second of two weeks of conference meetings in Cali, Colombia, runs through Friday (November 1). This is the 16th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. And the Amsterdam-based Elsevier has issued a report on the research work that’s helping to examine and guide the issues and protocols under consideration.

At its core, “COP Biodiversity,” as you may hear it called, is intended to “halt and reverse nature loss.”

While the larger, better known COP climate change series of meetings may be looking at the broadest array of policy issues relative to the Earth’s survival, COP Biodiversity under the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) starts with the planet’s most fundamental natural challenges—and as this highly readable, quick article, Five Drivers of the Nature Crisis, will tell you—climate change is only one of those drivers. In addition to that familiar emergency are invasive species; changes in land and sea use; pollution; and direct exploitation of natural resources.

The COP15 meetings in Montreal concluded with the adoption of a “global biodiversity framework” of four goals and 32 targets meant to handle those drivers. Last week’s and this week’s talks build on that platform.

“At COP16,” UNEP reports, “governments will be tasked with reviewing the state of implementation” of that Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. “Parties to the convention are expected to show the alignment of their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans with the framework. COP16 will further develop the monitoring framework and advance resource mobilization for the Global Biodiversity Framework.”

Elsevier’s Report

Elsevier is focused on getting an understanding of the shape of the world’s research on biodiversity’s issues—the research biome, if you will—to learn, as any good science and academic publisher will, the shape and provenance of the available data.

Echoing the “five drivers” article, Michiel Kolman, a past president of the International Publishers Association (IPA) and Elsevier’s senior vice-president for research networks, tells Publishing Perspectives that he recalls going to a conference in the Netherlands as long as five years ago. “And I heard someone speak about biodiversity as the biggest problem we’re facing, maybe even bigger than climate change. And the two, of course, are related.

“I thought then that this was a topic we should definitely put on the agenda.”

Kolman is one of the authors if the new report. And in looking at what was being done in biodiversity research, he says he found, “It’s a very healthy area. It’s growing fast in terms of international impact,” by which he refers to the sort of “citation impact” that writers and publishers of research and journals follow and evaluate.”

When he and his team assessed biodiversity research in the Netherlands, they found out, “We do really well,” Kolman says, one Dutch university being “an absolute leader worldwide” in the field.

With COP16 coming in Colombia this month, he analyzed the research activity more deeply and found that, “For me, the most surprising thing is that if you look at the relative activity compared to research in all disciplines, biodiversity runs very high on the radar. It has scientific impact, and it has policy impact.

“So then we questioned, ‘Who’s doing the most research on biodiversity in Latin America?’ Brazil was really standing out. And together with Mexico, we found that they do more than half of all the research in Latin America.

“And if you look at the Top 30 universities active in biodiversity research, around 20 are from Brazil. So the Brazilians dominate biodiversity research.”

Key Conclusions of the New Study

These are among some of the conclusions of the full report, and in the descriptive copy, we’re quoting Elsevier’s commentary.

• Latin America is three times as active in biodiversity research than the world’s average

  “Biodiversity research scholarly output is especially intense in key Global South regions: In Latin America, relative activity is three times the world average, and in Africa, relative activity is two times the world average. These regions publish substantially more on biodiversity research than they do in their overall contributions to international research.”

• Significant impact on policy
  

  Source: Elsevier

  “On average, 10 percent of biodiversity research is cited in policy documents, and that is three times higher than for research across all disciplines. Internationally, Australasia (with 20 percent) and the United States and Canada (with 15 percent) stand out for remarkably high impact on policy. Latin American research has a notable impact on world policy, with 8.5 percent of Latin American biodiversity studies cited in policy documents, approaching the international average of 10 percent. This is also considerably higher than the 3.7 percent of all Latin American research referenced in policy documents.”

• Strong contribution from Europe

  “As a region, Europe contributes 32 percent of all biodiversity research, way ahead of the United States and Canada (17 percent) and East Asia (16 percent, including China). Latin America contributes 11 percent internationally, and in this region, Brazil and Mexico together contribute 58 percent. In the Top 30 of the most prolific universities on biodiversity in Latin America, 20 are from Brazil, three are from Mexico and two are from Chile. The Top 5 are the University of São Paulo (USP); National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); São Paulo State University (UNESP); Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ); and State University of Campinas (Unicamp).”

• High level of international collaboration

  “Of all biodiversity research collaborations, 36 percent are across borders, which is significantly higher than the global average across all disciplines of 21 percent. In Latin America, 51 percent of all collaborations are international, mostly collaborating with the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain. The field-weighted citation impact of the international collaboration in Latin America is high, with values between 2 and 5.

In additional, quick points of interest among the Elsevier report’s results:

• In Latin America, 51 percent of biodiversity research publications involve authors from multiple countries, surpassing the global average of 36 percent for the field.
• The United States, United Kingdom, and Spain are the leading collaborators by volume.
• International collaborations from the region demonstrate strong impact, with Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) values ranging from 2 to 5.
• In terms of citation impact, China, South Africa, and Switzerland stand out as top partners.

And while COP 16 is seated in a region so rich in research in biodiversity, it’s doubly good to know this, when you read this key commentary from the executive director and under-secretary-general for UNEP, Inger Andersen. He writes:

“Nature and biodiversity is dying the death of a billion cuts. And humanity is paying the price for betraying its closest friend. In the words of the UN secretary-general, ‘We are committing suicide by proxy.’ This Conference of the Parties [COP] must secure the future of our planetary life support system.”

You can download and read the full report from Elsevier here.

And if you’re interested in following some of the COP16 summit programming, Wednesday (October 30) is designated “Restoration Day” in Cali’s Kunming-Montreal Pavilion. You can use this link to learn more and to hear streamed audio of the proceedings, from 8:30 a.m. Central Time (GMT-5). 

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