91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ

A national ecosystem assessment is a nationally-driven process to develop an up-to-date, comprehensive and critical synthesis of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services and their interlinkages to people. The NEA Initiative supports countries to tailor the process developed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to carry out ecosystem assessments. The aim is to adapt national ecosystem assessments to specific national needs and circumstances, empowering greater support for decision-making.

• Stewardship

Many Indigenous Peoples and local communities are steward of the environment and often have strong customary governance systems and ethical and cultural principles. They manage an estimated 15% of the global forests, and Indigenous Peoples alone own and/or manage at least 25% of the global land, and approximately 35% of all remaining terrestrial areas with low human intervention. 

• Policy relevance

Meaningful engagement of Indigenous Peoples and local communities ensures assessment policy recommendations are compatible with Indigenous livelihoods and lifestyle. 

• Valuable knowledge

Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold in-depth and diverse knowledge of their environment, and often have distinct philosophies, worldviews, ethical and spiritual systems that can provide different perspectives to environmental challenges and solutions, thereby increasing the robustness of the assessment.

The multiple evidence base (MEB) approach proposes parallel inter-linked approaches whereby Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge systems are viewed to generate different manifestations of knowledge, which can generate new insights and innovations through complementarities. MEB emphasizes that evaluation of knowledge occurs primarily within rather than across knowledge systems. MEB creates an enriched assessment through triangulation, joint assessment of knowledge, and knowledge co-production.