Apply for the IPBES Fellowship Programme for early-career individuals from all backgrounds working on biodiversity and ecosystem services

0 1 3 minutes read

Closing Date: 28 March 2025

Apply for the IPBES Fellowship Programme for early-career individuals from all backgrounds working on biodiversity and ecosystem services

The IPBES Fellowship Programme

The IPBES fellowship programme provides an opportunity for outstanding early-career individuals from all backgrounds and disciplines working on biodiversity and ecosystem services to participate in IPBES assessments. The fellows gain first-hand experience in participating in major multidisciplinary scientific assessments while working with, and being mentored by, leading experts. The programme is an integral part of IPBES work on capacity-building, and aims at developing the capacities of fellows in undertaking assessments, thus creating a pool of experts suited for contributing to future assessments and promoting the work of IPBES in their home countries and institutions.

Benefits of being an IPBES fellow

Fellows selected to take part in the programme will participate in the production of one of the chapters of their assessment, taking part in author and chapter meetings together with the rest of the experts undertaking the assessment. Fellows will also be invited to participate in capacity-building workshops bringing together fellows across all ongoing assessments to share experiences and learn about key cross-cutting and assessment specific topics.

Being an IPBES fellow means being part of a multidisciplinary and multicultural group of outstanding early-career individuals sharing an ambition to contribute to improving the science-policy interface of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Throught the programme, fellows:

Get hands-on experience in working in multidisciplinary teams to produce major scientific assessments
Work with, learn from and get to know internationally leading experts from all over the world
Learn about the interface between science and policy on biodiversity and ecosystem services
Receive training and mentoring
Connect with other outstanding early-career experts
Expanded their social and professional network
Get the opportunity to participate in joint projects and publications

What is the role and responsibility of fellows within an assessment?

Fellows are an integral part of the IPBES assessment chapters and they collaborate with the coordinating lead authors (CLAs) and lead authors (LAs) in developing sections or parts of the chapters
Fellows receive training to gain in-depth understanding of the IPBES assessment process
Fellows will be paired up with a mentor for the assessment period
Fellows are expected to participate in the author meetings and training workshops

Mentorship

As part of the programme, fellows are paired up with a senior expert in their assessment that will act as a mentor for the fellow for the duration of their fellowship. There are no limits on the content of the collaboration between mentors and fellows and there are a number of examples of fellows and mentors working together on joint projects, publications and funding applications beyond the scope of their collaboration under the IPBES assessment. Being a mentor is an excellent opportunity for IPBES experts to get to know, work with and learn from a group of bright early-career scholars from all over the world.

IPBES Fellowship Alumni Network

The first cohort of fellows graduated from the fellowship programme with the approval of the summaries for policy makers of the assessment on land-degradation and restoration and the regional assessments on biodiversity and ecosystem services of Africa, the Americas, The Asia Pacific and Europe and Central Asia in March 2018.

The IPBES Fellowship Alumni are an important resource for IPBES, both as a pool of experts for upcoming assessments, mentors and resource persons for new cohorts of fellows, and as ambassadors for IPBES in their local institutions and countries.

Represented in all UN regions, the IPBES Fellowship Alumni represent a “community of practice” working together to mobilize resources and expertise to develop cross-cultural collaborations and support IPBES’s mission, to strengthen knowledge foundations for better policy through science, for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development.