Apply to join the fully funded Regional Youth Workshop on IPBES for Europe and Central Asia 2025

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Closing Date: 31 May 2025

Apply to join the fully funded Regional Youth Workshop on IPBES for Europe and Central Asia 2025

Regional Youth Workshop

The objective of the workshop is to support youth engagement with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and increased understanding and use of IPBES products. The regional workshop aims at building capacities of early career professionals and committed young people from European (including the CEE region) and Central Asian countries.

During the workshop the participants will learn about IPBES processes and products and explore options for youth engagement in IPBES activities. Special emphasis will be given to supporting increased understanding and use of the outcomes of the IPBES Nexus Assessment and the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (2024). The participants will also work with visioning concepts like the Nature Futures Framework.

The Regional youth workshop will bring together 25 participants from Western, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia who are actively engaged in work on biodiversity, ecosystem services and nature conservation (including interlinkages with water, food, health and climate change or transformative change processes), representing a youth organisation/network from Europe and Central Asia and interested in taking part in and contributing to IPBES processes. IPBES aims to achieve disciplinary, gender and geographic balance when selecting candidates.

The in-person workshop is organized by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with support from the IPBES technical support unit on capacity-building and contributions from members of the IPBES fellowship programme and resource persons.

Support for travel, full board and accommodation will be provided to all participants by the German Government. Participation for successfully selected applicants only.

Application process and selection criteria

The application process consists of two parts:

Application: Candidates are invited to complete the online application form, including a statement of motivation and a letter of reference by their nominator (a government or their organisation/network) as an annex.
Nomination: Candidates need to send their nominating Governments, organizations or networks (nominator) either the download-link or the file of the nomination form/letter of reference. The nominator then has to fill in the nomination form, rename the file and send it back to the applicant. Then the applicant needs to attach the nomination form/letter of reference as an annex to the online application.

Please note that the application form as well as the nomination form are in English only.

Successful candidates need to:

Be between 18-30 years of age

Be a national from one of the following countries (Reflecting the scope of the IPBES regional assessment for Europe and Central Asia):
- Western European countries: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Central European countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Turkey
- Eastern Europe: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine
- Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan
Be actively engaged in work on biodiversity, ecosystem services and nature conservation (including interlinkages with water, food, health and climate change or processes and activities of transformative change)
Be nominated by a Government or an organisation/network via a letter of reference
Be committed to participate in person in the youth workshop. Participants are expected to actively contribute to the workshop and to report on its outcome and on the work of IPBES to their home institutions and other relevant organisations and networks
Have very good speaking, reading and writing skills in English as the workshop will be held in English
Have demonstrated ability to respectfully interact with people from other disciplines and work effectively and efficiently in a multicultural team.