Harnessing biodiversity and conservation knowledge products to track the Aichi Targets and Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

For 50 years, the IUCN Commissions, Secretariat, Members such as BirdLife International and partners such as UNEP-WCMC have been mobilising biodiversity and conservation knowledge products, which are fundamentally important for tracking progress towards 10 of the 20 Aichi Targets, and should similarly become so for seven of the emerging 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Each of these knowledge products comprises standards, governance and quality control, data sets, tools, capacity building and ongoing processes for derivation of biodiversity indicators. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, established in 1964, documents extinction risk for more than 76,000 species. Protected Planet, working from the mandate to provide the UN List of Protected Areas, is convened jointly with UNEP and documents ~220,000 protected areas. The Red List of Ecosystems aims to assess the risk of collapse of ecosystems, and is currently being piloted in a number of countries. Key Biodiversity Areas are sites contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity, identified at national levels using globally standard criteria. The system has been developed over the last four decades by BirdLife International and others with ~15,000 sites identified; it is anticipated that IUCN will approve the umbrella standard around these existing approaches in 2015. Of the 55 global indicators mobilised for mid-term assessment of progress towards the Aichi Targets for the fourth Global Biodiversity Outlook, nearly a third were wholly or partly based on these knowledge products (spanning 10 of the Aichi Targets). Indicators derived from these knowledge products will also be applicable to seven of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, annual investment into these knowledge products is currently only a fraction of that necessary to maintain their currency, quality, and scope. If these key indicators towards the Aichi Targets are to be maintained, sustainable long-term financing mechanisms must be established to resource the underlying knowledge products.