Appendix II Report on progress in piloting a community of practice for the social sciences and humanities

Cynthia Mwanza

Summary • The piloting of a social sciences and humanities community of practice has resulted in the establishment of a social sciences and humanities network as a subgroup in Onet; • The contributions of social sciences and humanities to IPBES could be further enhanced; • The social sciences and humanities network could contribute to a better understanding of and engagement with a broader spectru. [...] In order to accomplish the objective of IPBES “to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development”, the value of engaging researchers from the social sciences and humanities in the work of IPBES has been acknowledged both inside and outside IPBES, as have. [...] As a result of the meetings as well as of communications with the IPBES secretariat on possible formats for establishing the community of practice, a dialogue was initiated with the Open-Ended Network of IPBES Stakeholders (ONet), and in the end of 2020, the community of practice formally became a subgroup of ONet, named The Social Sciences and Humanities Network ( ). [...] Challenges and possibilities in reaching out to a wider set of scholars from social sciences and the humanities • IPBES assessments on topics more directly associated with natural sciences may not attract sufficient numbers of experts from social sciences and humanities, where the relevance of the work of IPBES to their fields of work and the relevance of their expertise to the work of IPBES is no. [...] Potential functions a network could perform in order to enhance the incorporation of social sciences and the humanities in the work of IPBES: • Establish a pool of experts from social sciences and the humanities which may be interested in seeking nominations as experts for various IPBES deliverables, could contribute to the review of draft IPBES scoping documents and assessments, and could engage.