Timpte, MalteMontana, JasperReuter, KatrinBorie, MaudApkes, Jascha2025-05-302025-05-301351-1610ORCID:/0000-0003-3405-2549/work/162948500http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85032787899&partnerID=8YFLogxKhttps://hdl.handle.net/1885/733754985The need for interdisciplinary expert groups from different regions of the world to be involved in the fields of sustainability science and environmental change research is increasingly recognised. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES) was established in 2012 as a science-policy interface and has gone beyond previous initiatives in its articulation of a clear commitment to inter- and transdisciplinary approaches that mandate a diversity of genders, disciplines and regional backgrounds within its expert groups. The first IPBES work programme, carried out between 2014 and 2018, has been supported by 17 expert groups, comprising over 1000 experts, who have been selected from over 2000 government and stakeholder nominations through formal procedures. In this paper, we present and critique the framework through which IPBES identifies and selects experts to participate in its processes. In addition, we synthesise and carry out a quantitative analysis on the expert nomination and selection data relating to the first assessment activities of IPBES. Identifying that the balance of regions, genders, disciplines and knowledge systems represented within these expert groups is still disproportionally dominated by male natural scientists from the Global North, the paper makes recommendations of how to better engage knowledge holders from different disciplines and diverse knowledge systems in future iterations of the IPBES work programme.This work was supported, in part, by Science in Society Division and the project ?Network-Forum for Biodiversity Research Germany?NeFo? at the Museum f?r Naturkunde Berlin. We would like to thank the IPBES secretariat, especially Thomas Koetz and Benedict Aboki Omare for first-hand insights into the IPBES expert selection process and for providing the data that led to the development of this paper. We thank the journal editor and anonymous reviewers who provided very valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Further, we would like to thank the National IPBES Focal Points in Belarus and Sweden, the IPBES TSU for the Asia-Pacific region based at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan and the German IPBES Coordination Office based at the Deutsches Zentrum f?r Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) for information and data on the national nomination and selection processes for IPBES experts. Another possible improvement for more balanced expert groups would be an increase of financial resources provided by the member states. Only if more resources are available to facilitate the participation and also the work of the engaged experts, including the members of the MEP, will the platform be able to attract more relevant knowledge holders. Firstly, IPBES member states might consider additional funds for the IPBES trust fund, which supports the participation of experts from developing countries and the general coordination of the Platform’s activities. In its first few years, IPBES has struggled to raise the finances to implement the full work programme, which has resulted in the delay of activities such as the methodological assessment on the diverse conceptualisation of values. Such activities are recognised to be invaluable for attracting experts from different disciplines (Turnout in Heffernan 2016), and member states could consider increasing their contributions to ensure the potential of IPBES is not diminished. Secondly, experts from developed countries must raise their own funds or obtain financial support from their national government to participate in the process. Since government financial support is more the exception rather than the rule, participation in IPBES is a practical challenge for many experts. Even those who are selected have found difficulty attending scheduled meetings due to high costs. Furthermore, increased funding might overcome structural differences between institutional backgrounds. Due to the main subjects of IPBES, it might be easier for larger organisations and institutions with a focus on natural and environmental research to support participation of their researchers in IPBES. Smaller institutions or universities, which have other funding structures than big non-universitary institutions, might lack the financial resources to support the engagement of their scientists in IPBES, especially when they do not have a background in the classical biodiversity research disciplines. This financial strain might discourage others to apply for nomination and limit the range of experts from those disciplines that might not traditionally participate in assessment activities.enPublisher Copyright: © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.biodiversity knowledgeexpert engagementinter- and transdisciplinary researchIPBESknowledge productionscience-policy-interfacestakeholder engagement2018-03-3010.1080/13511610.2017.138314985032787899