Impact case study database

Impacts on international policy-making

Establishing international biodiversity baselines and metrics: The indicators that we developed at UCL and IOZ have been instrumental in establishing baseline measures that underpin key international treaties and targets on biodiversity, which must be met if we are to mitigate the ongoing catastrophic decline in the planet’s biodiversity. The indices have been used to track progress towards these critical targets, making signatory countries and other political and economic actors accountable for progress towards these goals and indicating priority areas for action.

Our research has underpinned the frameworks for measuring biodiversity of several international treaty organisations and conservation observatories. The LPI and SRLI have both been used to track progress towards meeting the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) targets in 2014 and 2020. They are quoted by the UN Global Biodiversity Outlook report as authoritative measures of the speed of biodiversity decline, for example in the report’s section on progress towards the goals of the Strategic Plan and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (goal C, improving biodiversity status): “Two indicators of the state of biodiversity within this goal, the Living Planet Index and the Red List Index, show current declines and an extrapolation of continuing decline to 2020 based on current drivers.” [S1] . The two indices have also been highlighted as indicators for the post-2020 global target framework [S1]. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has also used the LPI, RLI and BII to quantify trends in biodiversity in its Global Assessment report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services [S2]. The SRLI has, for the first time, enabled the IPBES to quantify the threat to particular species and families and to communicate these figures in ways that make clear to laypeople the urgency and scale of threat to particular types of plants and animals. For example, the SRLI revealed that 18.99% of Reptiles are threatened with extinction and 40.55% of conifer trees and their relatives are threatened [S2, page 53]. Evidence from these indices have underpinned the IPBES’ grave warning that “around a million animal and plant species are currently threatened” [S2, page 6].

Additionally the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it, states that the IoZ/UCL work on the Red List and biodiversity indices “has had, and continues to have, significant impact on [their] understanding of extinction risk and global biodiversity” [S3].

Monitoring and conservation impact: As well as influencing global biodiversity monitoring and targets, IoZ/UCL research has led to new species-level IUCN monitoring and conservation efforts. As the global authority on the status of the natural world and conservation with over 1,400 member organisations and signatory governments, the IUCN maintains the Red List, the world’s most comprehensive index on the extinction risk of animal, fungus and plant species. Revisions and refinements to the Sampled Red List by the our researchers has been used to determine the extinction risk of groups such as reptiles, which were not previously represented. This led to the assessment of 1,500 species and their subsequent listing on the IUCN Red List. New IUCN guidelines drawing on this research have also been established for assessing species vulnerability to climate change (section 12.1 of the IUCN Guidelines for Using the Red List Categories and Criteria) and this led to the creation of the IUCN climate change impacts modelling group, chaired by UCL researcher Pearson. For example the IUCN listed Coffee arabica, which is a highly valuable crop, as endangered in 2018 following review of climate change impact models by the group [S3].

All three metrics (LPI, BII, RLI) underpinned the WWF’s flagship biennial report, the ‘Living Planet Report’ in 2016 and 2018 [S4]. This report has a global reach: it is published in 110 countries and in more than 20 languages, and it is estimated that the press coverage reach was over 100 million people [S4]. In the UK, biodiversity loss figures from our indicators found in this report were cited as the impetus for an Early Day Motion on Global Biodiversity in the House of Commons on 31 October 2016: “The catalyst for this debate was the Living Planet Report, prepared by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, that shows that the global wildlife population fell by more than half between 1970 and 2012.” [S5] As a result of this debate, 41 MPs signed a motion urging the UK government to tackle the effects of climate change, habitat loss and degradation, species over-exploitation, pollution and animal diseases [S5].

The indicators developed at both UCL and IoZ (BII and LPI indices) informed the UN Environment Programme’s assessment of the state of the environment, ‘Global Environment Outlook 6’ (2019) which explained the indices’ ability to create a more nuanced and accurate picture of biodiversity and species loss than previous measures:

“...these indicators provide finer spatial and temporal resolution. Trends in global vertebrate species population abundances as measured by the Living Planet Index show an average decline of 60 per cent between 1970 and 2014 … Globally, average local abundance of terrestrial species is estimated to have fallen to 85 per cent of modelled abundances in the absence of anthropogenic land-use change (Newbold et al. 2016)” [S6, page 156].

Research on these indices has thus led to a step-change in international environmental policy, whereby measures of biodiversity loss can be presented with confidence, informed and binding targets can be set and progress towards recovery can be accurately assessed.

Influencing regional and national policy-making

As a result of the widespread adoption of the tools developed at IoZ/UCL by major international and intergovernmental organisations, our researchers have undertaken commissioned assessments of biodiversity for a range of thematic groups across the world, including in:

The Arctic: The Arctic Species Trend Index [S7] was commissioned by the Arctic Council and the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), based upon the methodology and dataset developed for the LPI. CAFF have described this as “a new method and the first species indicator to understand and monitor the biodiversity of the Arctic” [S12].

European wetlands: The LPI methodology and open-source tools were also used to produce the Wetland Extent Index [S8].

Rewilding Europe: Further adaptation of these tools underpinned a Rewilding Europe project on extinction risk and abundance, and was presented in the ‘Wildlife Comeback in Europe’ report in 2013 [S9]. This report celebrated successful conservation efforts in 18 mammal and 19 bird species across the continent of Europe, and our indicators were used to assess the impact of these interventions and the lessons that could be learned from them for future projects and policy makers.

Canada: IoZ researchers also developed a series of regional assessments of biodiversity, again building upon the methodology and data developed for the global LPI. The Sustainability Directorate, Environment and Climate Change Canada and IoZ researchers collaborated to adapt the LPI methodology to establish the Canadian Species Index. This filled a gap in intelligence on vertebrate population changes across Canada and enabling the measurement of progress towards the Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators and the 2020 Biodiversity Goals and Targets for Canada [S10], now used by the Canadian Government to monitor national biodiversity trends [S10].

Australia: In Australia, IoZ researchers collaborated with the nation’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub and the University of Queensland to help develop the Australian Threatened Species Index (TSX) to track wildlife abundance of threatened species there.

UK: The Biodiversity Intactness Index of the UK, developed by UCL researchers, was featured in the UK’s ‘State of Nature Report’ (2016), an annual snapshot of the state of the UK’s biodiversity assembled from data from over 50 organisations [S11].