FIGURE 1: The IPBES conceptual framework (IPBES CF), represented here in simplified form, contemplates two ways in which people can act on the rest of the living world: the nature’s contributions to people (NCP) pathway (yellow shading) and the drivers pathway (purple shading). Some elements (boxes) of the IPBES CF participate in both pathways. Note that the boxes do not denote starkly separate domains; rather they are intended to focus attention and organise evidence and questions on different aspects. Boxes and unidirectional arrows should be interpreted as a ‘wheel in motion’, as part of a continuous flow of relationships, many of which are bidirectional. For full IPBES CF diagram, see https://www.ipbes.net/conceptual-framework.

By Sandra Díaz and Unai Pascual.

Read the full paper here.

The environmental sciences and science-policy international bodies, such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) or the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), are increasingly interested in the reciprocity between people and the rest of the living world, in the broad sense of the mutual interactions, positive and/or negative, between living entities with the capacity to act autonomously on each other. We first discuss different meanings of the term reciprocity, then we discuss how it fits within the conceptual framework of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), to date the most prominent intergovernmental process assessing the state and trends of biodiversity and what it means to people. We show that the notion of reciprocity has been explicitly incorporated in the IPBES conceptual framework since its inception. However, the human shaping of the rest of the living world, and practices of care towards it, deserve to be more spotlighted in research and policy. This could involve more attention to pre-existing practices of care for nature –of which we provide a few illustrative examples– and new practices inspired by them or created afresh.