How can global conventions for biodiversity and ecosystem services guide local conservation actions?
International audience ; With global science-policy conventions for biodiversity and ecosystem services in place, much effort goes into monitoring and reporting on the progress toward policy targets. As conservation actions happen locally, can such global monitoring and reporting efforts effectively guide conservation. actions at subnational level? In this paper we explore three different perspectives: policy reporting for policy implementation; scientific knowledge for empowerment and actions; and from past trends to influencing the future. Using these three perspectives, we identify ways forward for both decision makers and scientists on how to engage, inform and empower a larger diversity of actors who make decisions on the future of biodiversity and ecosystem services at multiple scales Without doubt, scientific understanding of why and where biodiversity and ecological resilience are degrading is advancing [1",2]. In addition, there is enormous investment and engagement by both decision makers and scientists to maintain and raise the environmental stakes on international policy agendas in the face of worldwide economic, social and political challenges. Global biodiversity targets as set by the signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010 (the Aichi targets), the 2013 European Union strategy on adaptation to climate change, and the Sustainable Development Goals, require short to medium term action in translating such targets to local conservation actions [e.g. 3], for instance at the level of protected areas, watersheds or a village [4]. With the first thematic, regional and global assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) being published [5,6] or steadily advancing, it is timely to reflect on how the substantial scientific and political investments in monitoring and reporting on progress toward global biodiversity and ecosystem service targets can be used effectively for conservation actions. Taking the perspective of ...