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Understanding the links between biodiversity, ecosystem services (ES) and human well-being (HWB) is a prerequisite for furthering the agenda of several multilateral environmental agreements and global goals. We performed a systematic review to discuss the extent to which biodiversity research has addressed the interface between ES and HWB and we focused on Brazil as a case study of global relevance. We found that biodiversity research in Brazil remains focused predominantly on biological processes and that research on the links with ES and HWB is in its early phases, exhibiting scarce connections with provisioning and cultural services. This pattern reveals the nature of existing funding policies and scientific gaps in the country. Given the global relevance of Brazil’s stock of biodiversity and ES, we argue that research on their links with HWB will be a crucial element of the national and global process of achieving Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Strategies for establishing priorities for the sustainability agenda by addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are prominent in the scientific literature. Some studies have suggested that sustainability will emerge from different backgrounds, such as through biosphere or societal transformations, whereas other approaches have searched for potential synergies and trade-offs between SDGs. Here, we analysed the main SDG database to investigate the caveats and cooperation opportunities to turn initiatives from local to global sustainability. We established an innovative conceptual framework to set up different sustainability trends for all SDGs and classified countries accordingly. We revealed that despite the significant advance in the last years, the sustainability agenda is still based on national rather than global performance. Consequently, the current efforts are promoting local sustainability trends with great spillover among countries. ‘Green’ SDGs 14 and 15 often had trade-offs or are uncoupled of social and economic SDGs. It suggests that the role ecosystem services play in connecting biodiversity and human wellbeing is not well incorporated into policies and practices. We argue that the world's shift towards global sustainability will depend strongly on cooperation among countries, strengthen existing synergies between SDGs and reduce negative externalities to other specific agendas.

A group of scientists created in 2015 the Brazilian Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BPBES), the first national-level initiative to emerge independently but inspired by the enterprise undertaken by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The main goal of BPBES is to develop assessment and special reports in co-production and dialogue with governmental and non-governmental stakeholders in Brazil, but independently from governmental perusal. This paper describes BPBES’s principles, design, routine practices, outputs, achievements, challenges, near-future perspectives, and costs. After three and a half years of activities, BPBES emerges as a link that connects various organisations within a boundary chain at the science-policy interface. By navigating the socioecological arena, engaging with various actors, we argue that BPBES is an emerging important player in conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services in Brazil. Differently from the regular scientific panel that produces assessment reports and special reports from time to time, we discuss the BPBES approach whereby such reports are due to be continuously updated by a system that combines consultation to and engagement of multiple actors, curators of specific themes, revision work, and communication to non-expert audiences. Challenges include how to avoid fatigue typical of extensive participatory processes, how to deal with the issue of representativeness of stakeholders selected, and long-term fundraising strategy. Finally, we discuss the potential relevance of other national level initiatives to facilitate on-the-ground implementation of practices and aspirations fostered by intergovernmental panels.