Biodiversity governance: a Tower of Babel of scales and cultures

The recently created Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), originally focused on multilateral and global issues, is shifting its focus to address local issues and to include in its assessments local stakeholders and indigenous and traditional systems of knowledge. Acknowledging that full biodiversity governance is unavoidably rooted in participation of local actors and their problems and knowledge, we suggest that to deal successfully with the complexity and diversity of local issues, including indigenous knowledge systems, IPBES must recognize a key role of local institutions.