Biodiversity Indicators for National Use

The Convention on Biological Diversity has established the need for countries to monitor trends in biodiversity through the use of indicators. However, in practice there has been little progress in implementing existing biodiversity indicators or in developing new ones. Although many countries have access to data relevant to biodiversity assessment and monitoring, the information is often not gathered or analyzed in ways that are appropriate for presentation as indicators.

This collaborative project, coordinated by UNEP-WCMC, will develop operational national-level biodiversity indicators to support planning and decision-making in the four participating countries. The successful approaches identified in the course of the project will be disseminated to strengthen the capacities of other countries, and to support global and regional development of indicators of biological diversity under the CBD.

In each of the four participating countries, several indicator frameworks will be tested for a focal ecosystem by national partners:

• Ecuador - The Ministry of Environment and EcoCiencia will focus on forest ecosystems;
• Kenya - The Kenya Wildlife Service will focus on wetland ecosystems;
• Philippines - The Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources will focus on coastal and marine ecosystems;
• Ukraine - Ukrainian Land and Resource Management Centre (ULRMC) will focus on agrobiodiversity.

The national partners will carry out extensive consultation with decision-makers at all levels. This will identify the key national biodiversity decision-making needs for the project to address, as well as determine the most accessible forms of presenting the information. Further national consultations will review the trial indicators that are developed. The project will test existing indicator frameworks from a number of sources (CBD approaches, GEF program framework, LPI, NCI, CIFOR, WCPA) using existing data (e.g. remote sensing and wildlife census data) available to the participating countries.

The indicator portfolios and experience developed will then be compared and exchanged among participants. This will ensure that the final outputs will be highly replicable by other countries. The final outputs of the project will include reports of the state of the focal ecosystem in each country and the indicators developed for them. Guidelines for indicator development and implementation will be published and disseminated under the CBD, supporting its work program on biodiversity indicators.

The UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center will manage the implementation of the project and provide technical support, along with RIVM (National Institute of Public Health and the Environment of the Netherlands). Financial support is provided by UNEP-GEF, governments and national partners, with major contributions by UK-DEFRA, UK-DFID, UNEP, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Swiss Agency for Environment, Forests and Landscapes. The project will run until December 2004.