The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) describe plausible futures for the society and economy of the world, using a combination of storylines and quantified elements (Riahi et al., 2017). The SSPs were developed by the climate change research community under the mandate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to facilitate analysis of climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation and mitigation in an integrated way. The SSPs provide researchers from a range of disciplines with a tool to explore the outcomes, and the associated uncertainty, of a variety of socioeconomic drivers. Based on their broad framework, the SSPs are also intended to be used for other sustainable development issues in addition to climate change, allowing linkages across different assessments, including biodiversity and ecosystem services.

A program of work currently underway under the mandate of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to link climate research with biodiversity assessment is described in this document.