This informal meeting will convene experts representing key scientific organisations interested in IPBES.
Following the “Busan Outcome” from June 2010, and the decisions taken by UNESCO's Executive Board (October 2010), the UN General Assembly (December 2010) and UNEP's Governing Council (February 2011), UNEP is currently cooperating with UNESCO, FAO, UNDP and other relevant organisations to organise a plenary meeting to fully operationalise IPBES. Two sessions of the plenary are provisionally scheduled.

The goals of the meeting are to: 1) share information among ourselves about items on the agenda at the IPBES October meeting; 2) discuss key issues, with a view to preparing a set of common positions of the scientific community to be presented at IPBES; and 3) further explore the programme of work of IPBES as it relates to “options for knowledge generation”. The overall objective of this workshop is to strengthen scientific input into IPBES. The meeting will produce a set of recommendations which will be submitted, as an information document, to the IPBES October meeting.