The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has launched a new assessment report examining the interconnections among biodiversity, food, water, health, and climate change.

The report calls for urgent, integrated, and cross-sectoral action.

The assessment report was aimed at providing decision-makers with a comprehensive scientific analysis of these complex linkages.

It also identified and explored over 60 specific response options to maximise co-benefits across the five interconnected areas of biodiversity, water, food, health, and climate change.

It further highlights that reducing plastic use has improved water quality, protected wildlife, reduced floods, and lowered waterborne diseases.

The findings indicated that focusing on synergies across biodiversity yields better outcomes for achieving SDGs compared to addressing them in isolation.

The co-chair of the assessment report, Paula Harrison, emphasised the need to move beyond working in silos and adopt integrated approaches to improve governance and the impacts of actions across interconnected sectors.

"An important part of that process is the external review, which allows both experts and governments to provide comments to improve the content of the report. So we had two external reviews for both experts and governments and an additional government review of the summary for policymakers over the three-year period. The knowledge evidence within the report is drawn from around six thousand 500 sources of evidence, which are taken from the period of literature, the grey literature, and include indigenous local language, and this includes references and data sources of all the regions."

The report is a result of three years of work led by 165 international experts from 57 countries.