More than ever before, there is a growing interest in dedicating resources to stop the loss of biodiversity, as recently exemplified by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) decided at COP15 in December 2022.
More than ever before, there is a growing interest in dedicating resources to stop the loss of biodiversity, as recently exemplified by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) decided at COP15 in December 2022. The GBF focuses on understanding why biodiversity is declining and what actions are needed to reverse this trend. However, according to researchers at McGill University, implementing the plan is challenging because information about biodiversity changes is not evenly available everywhere, and is uncertain in many places.
With the available data, can the scientific community and policymakers truly know if they are making progress toward international biodiversity targets, even if their efforts were effective? The research says that without a better picture of how and why biodiversity is changing in most countries, it is difficult to evaluate the effect of national plans outlined in the GBF.
“Even if policies stopped the decline of animal populations, we show mathematically that it will be hard to detect improvements with high certainty, in many places for various types of species (48 of 62 countries and species groups),” explains Prof. Brian Leung from McGill’s Department of Biology and Bieler School of Environment and lead author of the study. “This is because detecting progress is limited by the current levels of uncertainty in the data (the records are either too sparse or too variable) describing animal population trends”.
Read more at: McGill University
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