Back in Australia, Bradley Moggridge, a hydroclimatologist who identifies as a member of the Kamilaroi people, told Fairfax Media that increasing attention was being paid to Indigenous knowledge in science and policy circles.

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“But even now, there's no reference point for Aboriginal people to influence science or policy,” he said. “It’s hard for me as an Indigenous person and a scientist.”

“I can't reference the knowledge of my great-grandfather [when publishing hydroclimatology research].”

An Australian scientist involved in the plenary, Dr Ro Hill, research team leader at CSIRO Land and Water, said the IPBES process was about linking species with policy decisions.

“For the person in the street, there’s usually not a grasp of how clean air and clean drinking water come from functioning ecosystems,” she said.

On Friday morning, local time, the Asia Pacific Report (covering an area from Vladivostok down to Stewart Island south of New Zealand and including all the Pacific islands) laid out how local communities were key in meeting biodiversity challenges.

“In the past, overly top-down policies have created disincentives and perverse incentives that have fuelled biodiversity loss,” the report says.

“Local communities and higher-level stakeholders collaborating in decision-making processes that involve the conservation of nature are the best positioned to ensure the sustainable use of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people."

The report pointed to the region’s rapid growth as being supported by and impacting on biodiversity.

Biodiversity and “ecosystem services” - the good that is created by having a healthy ecosystem - contributed to economic growth of 7.6 per cent per year on average between 1990 and 2010 in the Asia-Pacific region, benefitting its more than 4.5 billion people, said Madhav Karki from Nepal.

However, according to Sonali Senaratna Sellamuttu, from Sri Lanka, “the region’s biodiversity faces unprecedented threats, from extreme weather events and sea-level rise, to invasive alien species, agricultural intensification and increasing waste and pollution”.

Professor Bridgewater said that although most countries in the Asia-Pacific region were on track to meet a biodiversity goal set down in the Aichi agreement, by declaring 17 per cent of land and 10 per cent of marine areas as protected, there was still a long way to go.

“The vast majority of biodiversity still occurs outside of protected areas. It occurs in and around where people live,” he said.

“So just because these areas are protected, doesn’t mean that biodiversity is being managed as well as it could be.”

Medellin was chosen to host this global biodiversity brains trust because it boasts 2500 hectares of natural and restored forests, drawing much of its drinking water from sources that ultimately spring from a fragile ecosystem called the paramo.

Medellin’s mayor, Federico Gutierrez, spoke at IPBES, proudly describing the city’s program that pays people to stay on their traditional lands, managing and restoring its biodiversity.