title: A Rosetta Stone for nature's benefits to people.
abstract: After a long incubation period, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is now underway. Underpinning all its activities is the IPBES Conceptual Framework (CF), a simplified model of the interactions between nature and people. Drawing on the legacy of previous large-scale environmental assessments, the CF goes further in explicitly embracing different disciplines and knowledge systems (including indigenous and local knowledge) in the co-construction of assessments of the state of the world's biodiversity and the benefits it provides to humans. The CF can be thought of as a kind of "Rosetta Stone" that highlights commonalities between diverse value sets and seeks to facilitate crossdisciplinary and crosscultural understanding. We argue that the CF will contribute to the increasing trend towards interdisciplinarity in understanding and managing the environment. Rather than displacing disciplinary science, however, we believe that the CF will provide new contexts of discovery and policy applications for it.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal (IMBIV- CONICET) and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Díaz
authors.affiliation: National Herbarium, Department of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management, College of Natural Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
authors.forename: Sebsebe
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Demissew
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Joly
authors.affiliation: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Canberra, Australia.
authors.forename: W Mark
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Lonsdale
authors.affiliation: Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Secretariat, UN Campus, Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Larigauderie
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D057766:Policy