The UK is fortunate in having lots of
information about its biodiversity, collected across a broad spread
of species and habitats by both professionals and amateurs. These
data are essential sources of evidence; for developing and
reporting policies and actions to conserve biodiversity; for
reporting; and for developing indicators.
Indicators are one of the means the UK can communicate the
results of monitoring and surveillance. The audience for
indicators is extremely broad, from the general public to all parts
of the private and public sectors
The idea of a headline suite of indicators, easily understood
and communicated to all, supported by a lower tier to aid
interpretation and provide more detail, has proved to be a robust
model and the most effective solution for communicating such a
difficult subject to such a wide audience. The UK approach to
sustainable development indicators has been well received
internationally and has helped to place the UK at the forefront of
international work on this subject.
The Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) agreed, at the seventh Conference of Parties (COP VII),
guidance for the selection of national biodiversity indicators.
This contains many principles generic to all indicators. At the
same meeting the CBD also agreed a framework of indicators for
assessing progress towards the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD) target to "significantly reduce the current
rate of biodiversity loss by 2010."
The UK has developed a set of indicators to help measure
progress towards the 2010 target - see Biodiversity in Your Pocket for the results of
this work, and the UK
Biodiversity Indicators Forum for details of a series of
meetings which have helped inform its development. The
relationship between Global, European, UK and Country biodiversity
indicators has
been mapped: Correspondance between
Global, European, UK and Country indicators.
In July 2009 an Expert Workshop on the 2010 Biodiversity
Indicators and Post-2010 Indicator Development in Reading
UK, reviewed progress in developing the global suite of
biodiversity indicators. The meeting identified lessons to be
learnt from the process of developing biodiversity indicators and
made recommendations to feed into discussions on the development of
a post-2010 target and indicators. The summary report is
available for download below.