Participants worked in groups during the second week of the São Paulo School of Advanced Science on Co-designing Biodiversity Assessments.

Throughout the second week of the SPSAS Biodiversity, participants and instructors worked in groups on projects focused on real-world demands and challenges discussed during the first week of the School.

Below, learn about the themes chosen by the 11 Working Groups of the School.

Group 1 – Valuing people’s contributions to nature within socio-bioeconomic initiatives in Brazil

The first group will work on valuing people’s contributions to nature within the Brazilian bioeconomy strategy. According to the group’s studies, only 16 countries have published bioeconomy strategies that are explicitly dedicated to promoting the bioeconomy in this entirety.

The group aims to produce an evidence-based policy brief to suggest recommendations for inclusive policies that value Brazilian Indigenous Peoples’, local communities’, and smallholder farmers’ contributions to nature while promoting just development.

In particular, the group will work on the non-monetary values that exist in the relationship between two giants of the Amazon: the Pirarucu and the river communities.

Group 2 – People’s contribution to nature: a biophilic framework to rethink conservation and management

The second group will also develop a project about People’s Contribution to Nature, this time, to explore the potential of a Biophilic Framework to reshape nature conservation, ecosystem restoration, and management.

By recognizing and fostering the human-nature connection, the group proposes that people can become active representatives in the preservation, restoration, and co-management of natural systems. The aim is to build a framework to be incorporated into IPBES Conceptual Framework that includes a perspective leaning on People’s Contribution to Nature rather than Nature’s Contribution to People.

This idea will be developed based on three case studies on India, Brazil and SriLanka.

Group 3 – Unraveling human-nature relationships through a network-based approach

The third #SPSASBiodiversity group aims to develop an interaction-based approach to enhance our understanding of human-nature relationships. The group is driven by the following question: Can integrating human perceptions with ecological interactions foster co-designed initiatives that promote the sustainability of social-ecological systems?

The core idea is that social-ecological networks, when combined with ecological interactions, can be developed through an iterative co-creation process rooted in knowledge exchange and trust-building with local communities. This approach could enable the group to visualize and analyze how human perspectives interact with—and potentially alter—species interactions over time. It may also serve as a foundational step toward co-designing solutions among researchers, local communities, and other stakeholders.

Grupo 4 – How to co-design pollinator conservation strategies along the gradient of agricultural intensity?

The group is interested in strategies to co-design pollinator conservation initiatives along the gradient of land-use intensity. 35% of global food production relies upon insect pollination but they are threatened by anthropogenic disturbances, like agricultural intensification. Across the gradient of agriculture intensification, different threats occur and different stakeholders arenas also occur. People involved possess different motivation/willingness/knowledge that is why different conservation strategies need to be developed. 

The group idea is to create a roadmap for these different strategies aimed for scientists, practitioners, farmers and policy makers.

Group 5 – Biodiversity monitoring techniques for non-specialists: enhancing engagement and adaptive management in restoration

The discussion presented by the participants focused on indicators for monitoring ecosystem restoration. The group is particularly interested in biodiversity monitoring techniques that are accessible to non-specialists, encourage their participation, and enhance engagement in restoration efforts.

The group aims to develop a practical guide for restoration practitioners. This guide will include criteria for selecting monitoring indicators that facilitate non-expert involvement, as well as example indicators for forest and dryland ecosystems. Each indicator will be described in terms of its definition, relevance to biodiversity, straightforward application methods, and potential limitations.

Group 6 – Identifying the challenges in sourcing plant biodiversity for non-forested ecosystems in South America and Africa

What are the challenges of sourcing plant biodiversity to restore native non-forested ecosystems in South America and Africa? This was the question posed by the last group of the morning’s presentations.

Ecological restoration is an important solution for restoring biodiversity around the world, and certain situations require moderately to intensively assisted restoration, which in turn requires the addition of plant species through seeding or planting. However, the species added often represent only a subset of the desired biodiversity for a restored ecosystem.

The goal of the group is to identify the challenges of plant species sourcing and to develop a framework that synthesizes and organizes existing knowledge and key challenges that need to be addressed in order to provide diverse plant material for restoration in South America and Africa. The idea is to present this framework in a brief for a target audience of policy makers, government and managers of restoration programs.

Group 7 – How to encourage the private sector to finance conservation in Brazil? A Study Case for National Action Plans

The group poses a difficult question: how to encourage the private sector to fund conservation?

As an answer, the group suggests the creation of the Green Hub: a platform that connects funders, conservation stakeholders and strategic partners to implement conservation projects in Brazil. These projects must be aligned with the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity and existing government strategic plans, such as the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans and the National Plan for the Conservation of Threatened Species.

The idea is that the Green Hub can provide a database of environmental and policy information that helps guide businesses and investors to existing conservation projects. It will also monitor the implementation of projects and the results achieved, and produce a report for both the company and the government.

Group 8 – Opportunities and Challenges of Implementing Biodiversity Credits in the Coffee Supply Chain in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil using a Roadmap

The eighth group of the SPSAS Biodiversity is interested in biodiversity credits. A biodiversity credit is a certificate that represents a measured and evidence-based unit of positive biodiversity outcome that is permanent and additional to what would otherwise have occurred.

The group is proposing a guideline to ensure that biodiversity is integrated into sustainable financial instruments and aligned with the “30×30” goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

The idea is to develop this guideline by aligning global and local biodiversity goals, prioritizing potential sites for implementing activities that can generate positive biodiversity outcomes and ultimately translate into biodiversity credits at the local level, and issuing biodiversity credits with metrics that can be reported in a global marketplace for multiple stakeholders.

Group 9 – Reframing the landscape in metrics for biodiversity credits

And the discussions on Biodiversity Credits continue in the ninth group, which aims to change the perspective of Biodiversity Credit projects by proposing the inclusion of landscape context in credit monitoring systems. To this end, the group proposes to assess beta-diversity in landscapes, i.e. the variation in species composition between sites in a geographic area of interest. 

The evaluation of changes in beta-diversity across time has been recently adopted by ecologists looking into biotic homogenization and differentiation and has the potential to control for the effect of the landscape context (e.g. the displacement or rising of threats) on the restoration and conservation project site. 

The group also proposes to write a policy brief aimed at practitioners and stakeholders.

Group 10 – How to improve Biodiversity Assessments of Carbon Credit Projects?

And the tenth group continues to think about Credits and biodiversity, this time, on how to improve biodiversity assessments on Carbon Credit projects.

The group proposes a structured framework for improving the process, including reviewing monitoring reports and incorporating attributes at the landscape, community, ecosystem, and species levels. 

With this, the group aims to ensure that these initiatives genuinely contribute to biodiversity conservation alongside climate goals. Also, by offering a standardized approach to support these assessments, it may improve transparency and credibility across diverse projects and regions. Additionally, it can help project developers to improve the quality of project activities, promote CCB Gold certification, and increase the value of carbon credits.

Group 11 – Advancing the use of eDNA for biodiversity monitoring in tropical regions

The last working group poses the question: How deep is the void? Promoting the use of eDNA for biodiversity monitoring in the tropics.

The goal of the group is to promote the use of eDNA to generate knowledge to guide biodiversity action in the neo- and afrotropical regions. The project aims to help reduce taxonomic bias, strengthen capacity building, and build South-South and North-South relationships.

To this end, the group proposes to produce a policy brief to provide information and recommendations to policy makers in governments in the Neo- and Afrotropical regions on the potential of environmental DNA as a complementary approach to biodiversity monitoring and to support transformative conservation.