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BirdLife Policy Brief for CBD COP-10, Nagoya

Indicators The world’s biodiversity is being lost faster than ever. As we destroy it, we lose its capacity to deliver ecosystem services such as crop pollination, freshwater provision and climate regulation upon which we all depend. Concerted and coordinated action by governments, businesses and civil societies is urgently needed to halt the loss of species and reverse the degradation and destruction of natural habitats. The world’s governments have made commitments through the CBD to tackle this issue and are poised to adopt a new Strategic Plan with 20 targets for 2020 to help frame and focus action. It is vital that effective indicators are developed and used to report against these targets in the years to come. These measures must be robust enough to be reliable and sensitive enough to demonstrate progress, or provide early warning of continued deterioration.

In Nagoya discussions relevant to or informed by indicators include:

• review of progress towards the 2010 biodiversity target (UNEP/CBD/COP/10/1/Add 2)

• the revised strategic plan and 2020 targets (UNEP/CBD/COP/10/9)

• consideration of the format of the fifth national reports (UNEP/CBD/COP/10/11).

Further development and use of indicators to assess progress in CBD implementation

BirdLife recommends that:

1. Details of these indicators should not be discussed at COP-10. Rather, an AHTEG should be established to develop the 2011–2020 indicator set and milestones.

2. Selection and development of indicators for the CBD 2020 targets should build on the substantial work already successfully undertaken by the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP). A similar follow-on project should be quickly established to facilitate technical collaboration.

3. The indicators should be linked within a Response-Pressure-State-Benefits framework that makes it clear if, and how, policy responses are making a difference, by monitoring their implementation, effects in reducing pressures, consequences for the state of biodiversity, and impacts on the benefits that people derive from nature (see BirdLife/Cambridge University/UNEP-WCMC leaflet on Joined-up indicators guide policy better)

4. Further development of many indicators will be needed. For most, additional data need to be collected and there are substantial gaps to be filled (e.g., on the benefits from biodiversity and ecosystem services).

5. Wherever possible, indicators should be scalable at local, national, regional and global levels.

6. Through SBSSTA and IPBES, processes for regular assessment and reporting on biodiversity indicators should be put in place.

7. Significant additional effort and investment (including in capacity-building) are needed to support indicator development and assessment, including the costs of maintaining and sharing data, development and use, reporting and dissemination.

8. Current biodiversity monitoring efforts (national, regional and global), which are often fragile and under-resourced, must be put on a more sustainable footing. In particular, Parties need to institutionalise and resource effective and sustainable monitoring (involving multiple stakeholders) at the national level.

Review of progress towards the 2010 biodiversity target

At COP-10, CBD Parties will consider progress to date in the implementation of the Convention and its current Strategic Plan, including progress towards the achievement of the 2010 target, as measured by its framework of indicators. This review will be conducted on the basis of the fourth National Reports, the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3), and relevant recommendations from the fourteenth meeting of SBSSTA and the third meeting of the Working Group on Review of Implementation of the Convention.

BirdLife has been an active member of the 2010 BIP, a global initiative established to develop and promote the CBD framework of indicators for reporting against the 2010 target. We have developed our data and indicators specifically to contribute to the 2010 BIP, and played a significant role in compiling the GBO-3 and publishing peer-reviewed scientific papers reporting on global biodiversity trends relevant to the 2010 target.

BirdLife data show that:

• the state of the world’s biodiversity, as reflected by its 10,000 bird species, continues to decline, and that this deterioration is not slowing but accelerating. For example, 1,226 (one in eight of the total) birds are now considered threatened with extinction. Changes in the IUCN Red List for birds (aggregated using the Red List Index) show that, over the past 20 years, the status of the world’s bird species has got worse, with more species slipping closer to extinction.

• in much of the world, many of the familiar, once common, bird species that we value are in decline. For example, bird population indicators show that European farmland birds have declined on average by 50% since 1980 and North American grassland birds have declined by nearly 40% between 1968 and 2003. Of the 1,200 waterbird populations with known trends, 44% are in decline.

From analysis using bird-related indicators, it is clear that the CBD 2010 target—to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth—has not been met.

Revised Strategic plan and 2020 targets

Parties will consider for adoption a revised and updated Strategic Plan for the Convention, including 20 proposed targets with milestones and possible indicators. It is vital that effective indicators are developed to report against the targets set out in the Strategic Plan. The choice of indicators will depend on the precise formulation of the targets agreed at COP-10, but, to help inform the negotiations in Nagoya and discussions after, BirdLife has published a report entitled Meeting the 2020 biodiversity targets: action and monitoring based on birds. The report provides examples for 12 of the 20 proposed CBD targets of how birds can help to focus actions to meet these targets, and how data from birds can help to monitor success.

BirdLife indicators for the 2020 targets include:

• The Red List Index (RLI) for birds. This index is based on the movement of species between the categories of extinction risk on the IUCN Red List, with values relating to the proportion of species expected to survive in the near future, assuming no additional conservation action. BirdLife pioneered the development of this index with other IUCN Red List partners and has a wealth of data, with RLI trends available for two decades (1988–2008). This is a coarse-scale indicator but one that integrates large amounts of diverse information, and very valuable in tracking significant changes in status. It has potential applications across many of the proposed targets, including Target 6 Overfishing and destructive fishing practices are eliminated (the RLI for seabirds), Target 9 Invasive alien species are prioritised and controlled or eradicated (the RLI for the impacts of different drivers of biodiversity loss), Target 12 Extinction and decline of threatened species is prevented (global and national RLIs and various sub-sets, e.g. for different ecosystems), and Target 14 Ecosystems that provide essential services and livelihoods are safeguarded and/or restored (the RLI for bird pollinators).

• Bird Population Indicators. Population trends of representative suites of wild birds (Wild Bird Indices) can track overall health of the environment. Indices are available for Europe (based on data from 22 countries, with others in development), North America, and the Arctic, and are soon to be available for some African countries. These indicators require systematic annual monitoring and can make an important contribution to measuring progress towards a number of the targets, including Target 2 Biodiversity is integrated into national development and planning (e.g. the UK Sustainable Development Indicator for wild bird population trends), Target 5 Loss, degradation and fragmentation of forest and other habitats is halved (Wild Bird Indices for forest and other habitats in Europe and North America, and bird population trends in the Arctic), Target 7 Agriculture, aquaculture and forestry are managed sustainably (Wild Bird Indices for farmland bird species in Europe), and Target 15 Ecosystem resilience and the contribution of biodiversity to carbon stocks is enhanced (bird population trends of forest-dependent bird species). In addition, combining systematic bird population monitoring with independent projections of climate change effects on bird distributions allows indicators to be calculated that illustrate the impact of climate change on biodiversity. These can be used to report against Target 10 Pressures on vulnerable ecosystems impacted by climate change are minimised.

• Important Bird Area indicators. Important Bird Areas (IBAs) represent a core set of the most important sites for biodiversity conservation across the globe. To date, some 10,000 IBAs have been identified in nearly 200 countries, mainly on land and freshwater, but with further work underway in territorial and high seas (see BirdLife’s poster Important Bird Areas:10,000 sites to save). The IBA Protection Index measures the degree to which these priority sites are covered by protected areas and provides a useful metric to report against Target 11 Terrestrial, inland-water, coastal and marine areas, especially important biodiversity areas, are conserved through effectively managed protected areas. In addition, the BirdLife Partnership has developed a standard framework for monitoring Important Bird Areas (IBAs). The State-Pressure-Response indices developed from these data show trends in the condition of these sites, the threats they face and the conservation actions being implemented at them.

Fifth National Reports to the Convention

Parties are requested to submit their national reports for consideration at alternate ordinary meetings of the Conference of the Parties (and, accordingly, the fifth national report will be due in March 2014). On the basis of the experience of the fourth and earlier national reports, draft guidelines for the fifth national reports have been prepared and the Conference of the Parties is invited to adopt these. These guidelines request Parties to report on progress towards the 2020 targets, using indicators where possible.

As conservation priorities for birds are often better known than for other species groups, they can help to target national activities on the most urgent issues, species and places. Many BirdLife Partners are working with their governments to ensure that data on threatened bird species and their critical sites and habitats (and associated indicators) are used to report on the status of their country’s biodiversity and to focus action to safeguard it. The proportion of countries for which moderate to strong emphasis was placed on threatened species increased from 58% to 77% between 1997–98 and 2008–09 (as reported in the 1st versus 4th National Reports), while for IBA conservation the corresponding figures were 50% and 92%. This is encouraging, and the BirdLife Partnership is committed to providing continuing support for national reporting, including information on national status and trends of and threats to birds/biodiversity, using national bird/biodiversity indicators.

BirdLife as a thematic Clearing Housing Mechanism for information on birds

Birds are better known than any other comparable group of organisms, with unparalleled information about which species are the closest to extinction, the threats they face, actions needed and critical sites (Important Bird Areas) that need safeguarding. These data can help to focus and target actions to tackle biodiversity loss. Furthermore, as birds are sensitive to environmental change, widespread, popular to watch, and relatively easy to monitor, indicators based on bird data are very useful for tracking progress in addressing the biodiversity crisis.

The CBD’s Clearing House Mechanism (CHM) aims to contribute to the implementation of the Convention through the promotion and facilitation of technical and scientific cooperation. BirdLife acts as a bird CHM with links from the CBD’s website to its own website and resources, including to its Data Zone (with fact sheets on all the world’s 10,000 bird species and 10,000 IBAs) and to ‘State of the world’s birds’ (with over 200 global and national case studies illustrating what we know about the changing state of birds, why birds are declining, and what can be done to improve their status, with many examples of the use of birds as indicators). See www.birdlife.org/datazone.

References

BirdLife International (2008) State of the world’s birds: indicators for our changing world. Cambridge, UK: BirdLife International (available at www.birdlife.org/sowb)

BirdLife International (2010) Meeting the 2020 biodiversity targets: action and monitoring based on birds. Cambridge, UK: BirdLife International (available www.birdlife.org/community/tag/cop10-products/)

BirdLife International/Cambridge University/UNEP-WCMC (2010) Joined-up indicators guide policy better. Cambridge UK: Cambridge Conservation Initiative

Butchart et al. (2010) Global biodiversity: indicators of recent declines. Science 328: 1164–1168 (doi: 10.1126/science.1187512)

Mwangi et al. (2010) Tracking trends in key sites for biodiversity: a case study using Important Bird Areas in Kenya. Bird Conservation International 20: 215–230 (doi: 10.1017/S0959270910000456, available at www.birdlife.org/community/2010/10/iba-monitoring-data-will-measure-progress-towards-cbd-targets)

Rands et al. (2010) Biodiversity conservation beyond 2010. Science 329, 1298–1303 (doi: 10.1126/science.1189138, available at www.conservation.cam.ac.uk)

BirdLife contacts in Nagoya: Leon Bennun, Director – Science, Policy and Information Management leon.bennun@birdlife.org

Alison Stattersfield, Head of Science alison.stattersfield@birdlife.org

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The BirdLife Partnership

BirdLife International is a partnership of 114 national conservation organisations and a world leader in conservation. BirdLife’s unique local to global approach enables it to deliver high impact and long term conservation for the benefit of nature and people.