The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed, at the seventh Conference of Parties (COP VII), guidance for the selection of national biodiversity indicators.  This contains many principles generic to all indicators.  At the same meeting the CBD also agreed a framework of indicators for assessing progress towards the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) target to "significantly reduce the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010."  The UK Biodiversity Indicators have been developed against the CBD framework to enable the UK to measure progress towards the 2010 target

A small project group of staff from Defra and JNCC are responsible for day-to-day work in developing and updating the indicators.  The UK Biodiversity Indicators Steering Group, chaired by Defra, and involving country administrations, statutory conservation agencies and non-governmental representation is convened twice a year to ensure the indicators are fit for purpose and to make recommendations to the UK Biodiversity Partnership Standing Committee, which oversees the UK Biodiversity Action Plan – the UK’s NBSAP.

A meeting of experts from country administrations, statutory and non-statutory nature conservation bodies was convened to identify what indicators already existed at a country level against the CBD framework.  From this review, a set of initial indicators was developed - making use of existing work and ensuring scalability from UK to country level.  Meetings of the UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum were also used to inform the development of the indicators.  The relationship between Global, European, UK and Country biodiversity indicators has been mapped: Correspondence between Global, European, UK and Country indicators. 

Details of the individual indicators, including background technical papers, are provided on http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-4233. 

Eighteen indicators have been selected and developed, although one, habitat connectivity, is still under development.  The indicators are grouped under five of the CBD focal areas, and an additional focal area ‘Public awareness and participation’ has been added.  Many indicators have a single measure which changes over time (fish stocks in UK waters, for example) but where data cannot logically be combined, such as for the area of sensitive UK habitats affected by acidity and area affected by nitrogen, the indicator will have more than one measure.  Each measure is assessed, using a set of ‘traffic lights’ – see below.

The first set of indicators was published in May 2007 both on the web, and as a hard copy booklet entitled ‘UK Biodiversity Indicators in Your Pocket’. 

During 2007 and 2008 a number of initiatives were undertaken to fill gaps and develop indicators which were not available in 2007.  A web-based update of the indicators was published in May 2008.

The indicators were updated again in early 2009 and published in both hard copy and web format in May 2009 in parallel with their use for the UK CBD 4th National Report. 

Results are presented for each indicator or individual measure with the use of graphs and a ‘traffic light’ system.  The traffic light system consists of a series of icons and provides a simple, concise way of communicating indicator trends.  The traffic lights assess ‘change over time’ (whether or not things are moving in the right or wrong direction).  They do not assess whether the measure has reached any published or implied targets, or indeed whether the status is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, although where targets have been set, these are identified in the indicator text.

The UK Biodiversity Indicators ‘traffic lights’:

An update of the indicators is being planned for publication at the end of May 2010.

When the details of the new biodiversity target have been decided by CBD CoP 10 in Japan, the indicators will be re-assessed by the Steering Group to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.  Whether new indicators will be needed will depend on the scope of the post-2010 target.

UK Biodiversity Indicators in Your Pocket 2009

UK Biodiversity Indicators in Your Pocket 2007