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Five recommendations to fill the blank space in biodiversity indicators at local and short-term scales
Katherine Hébert, Maximiliane Jousse, Janaína de Andrade Serrano, Dirk Karger, Guillaume Blanchet, Laura J. Pollock
The year 2030 is rapidly approaching. Building, monitoring, and reporting indicators to evaluate the 2030 targets in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is a major challenge that requires, at minimum, nations to assess their progress at least once within the next five years. To effectively monitor this progress, we need indicators that capture fast-paced, on-the-ground biodiversity change at the scale of conservation action, alongside slower, more diffuse biodiversity trends at national scales. We argue that the focus on monitoring global and national biodiversity changes has left a gap in our ability to capture fine-scale changes and therefore our progress towards the GBF’s Goal A targets. To fill this blank space, we recommend integrating locally-sourced data into existing biodiversity indicators, testing indicator performance at relevant spatio-temporal scales, monitoring locally and strategically to detect changes, and developing indicators of biodiversity change at actionable scales.