CLAS Lecture Series: Chasing the Biodiversity Crisis

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Chasing the Biodiversity Crisis with Henrique Pereira, Tinker Visiting Professor

How serious is the biodiversity crisis and what to do about it? In this talk I will argue that although we do not face yet a mass species extinction, a major biodiversity crisis is on-going with dramatic implications for the planet and for us. I will discuss recent assessments about the dimension of the biodiversity crisis and identify remaining knowledge gaps. I will present efforts by the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network to address some of these gaps, including by developing national biodiversity observation networks in Latin America and elsewhere. I will conclude my talk with a discussion of scenarios being developed for the future of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the next decades, and how they can be used to support policy-making in the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Henrique Pereira is a world leading expert on global biodiversity change. He has worked both as a researcher and as a practitioner, having served as the Director of Peneda-Gerês National Park and as the coordinator of the Portugal Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Since 2013, he is the Professor of Biodiversity Conservation at iDiv - German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and Invited Professor at InBio, Universidade do Porto (Portugal). He is the Chair of the Biodiversity Observation Network of the Group on Earth Observations and co-chair of the Expert Group on Scenarios and Models from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He has published over one hundred scientific papers and reports on biodiversity issues.