Blog by Dr Lizzy Green, UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre and formerly RSPB Centre for Conservation Science
Nature is in trouble. Natural habitats are disappearing, species are facing extinction and unsustainable practices are pushing ecosystems and the services they provide to their limits. The pressures facing biodiversity are diverse and global, with long-term devastating consequences for both the natural world and our own existence. In order to reverse the decline in biodiversity and safeguard nature for future generations, we therefore need a global action plan to coordinate conservation interventions among countries and conserve nature across the entire planet.
The Convention on Biological Diversity provides the framework for such a plan. In 2010 nearly 200 countries signed up to the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, which outlined 20 global biodiversity-focused targets (the ‘Aichi Biodiversity Targets’). These targets covered a wide range of topics, such as improving public awareness of biodiversity, enhancing ecosystem resilience, preventing species extinctions and conserving natural areas.
Photo: The Aichi Biodiversity Targets
However, as the 2020 deadline looms, global assessments show that progress towards most of the targets has been insufficient and, worryingly, in some cases the situation has worsened. This overall failure is probably the result of many factors, like how well the targets align with other national priorities and governance structures, and the financial and social costs of achieving them. But one additional consideration is that progress may have been affected by how well governments were able to understand the targets and translate them into actions and policies.
The targets have been frequently criticised for being too complex, ambiguous and unquantifiable. For example, let’s look at Target 11 in more detail…
“By 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes.”
What a mouthful! Target 11 alone can be broken down into six individual elements: 1) 17% of terrestrial and inland water and 2) 10% of coastal and marine areas, especially 3) areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through 4) effectively and equitably managed, 5) ecologically representative, 6) well connected systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, and integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes. While the two area-focused elements are quantitative, the remaining four elements are unquantifiable and vague. What is the definition of an ‘area of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services’? How do you measure whether these conserved areas are ‘integrated into the wider landscapes and seascapes’? What counts as ‘other effective area-based conservation measures’? The lack of clear definitions and baselines has undoubtedly prevented governments from assessing how well their conserved areas meet these criteria and from implementing policies to achieve them.
It seems plausible, then, that characteristics of the Aichi Targets, such as clarity and measurability, could have an impact on how much progress has been made towards them. With the 2020 deadline on the horizon and discussions around a new global deal for nature underway, it is crucial to assess the relationship between target wording and progress so that we can develop a more effective plan for the post-2020 period.
In our recent study we attempted to do just that. We broke each of the targets down into their individual elements and asked a group of international experts to score each element from 0-10 against a set of ‘SMART’ criteria. ‘SMART’ is an acronym for five criteria associated with well-designed targets: Specific, Measureable, Ambitious, Realistic and Time-bound (although other versions exist). Because all the targets are explicitly time-bound (to either 2015 or 2020), we didn’t assess the targets against that criterion, but we did include two additional criteria: unambiguous and scalable. To avoid being unclear or ambiguous ourselves, we provided our group of experts with definitions for these criteria throughout the scoring process. We then examined the relationship between how ‘SMART’ the targets were considered to be by our experts and how much progress had been made towards them, using two independent global progress assessments.
Our analyses showed that more progress has been made towards targets that were more measurable, realistic, unambiguous, scalable, and to some extent, more specific. Less progress has been made towards targets that were considered vague, unquantifiable or unrealistic. This perhaps unsurprising finding indicates the importance of clear-wording when developing global biodiversity targets.
With coordinated, effective global action, we can turn the tide on biodiversity decline. While there are multiple obstacles to overcome, following a ‘SMART’-based framework during the development of a new post-2020 deal for nature would help to ensure a more effective set of targets, enabling governments to interpret and translate them into policies and actions. We hope these findings will help to guide the design and wording of effective global biodiversity targets for the next decade and beyond.
Reference: Green E.J., Buchanan G.M., Butchart S.H.M., Chandler G.M., Burgess N.D., Hill S.L.L., Gregory R.D. In press. Relating characteristics of global biodiversity targets to reported progress. Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13322