A new report summarises key approaches for building the next ten-year strategy to reverse the decline of nature. Based on workshop discussions, and brought together by UNEP-WCMC, it draws on expertise from both policy makers and the scientific community, to bring together scientific information related to biodiversity that is targeted to be relevant for the development of the next strategic plan for biodiversity which will run from 2020 to 2030.

What are the goals for nature?
In 2020 world leaders will meet in Kunming, China, to agree the post-2020 global biodiversity framework - a ten-year plan to tackle the current decline of nature. Decision makers will draw on the lessons learned from implementing the existing Aichi Biodiversity Targets over the past 10 years, many of which have been difficult to put into action. One of the key reasons for this is a lack of scientific data underpinning these targets and a broader challenge in understanding the targets and measuring progress towards them.

What does the report include?
This new report, based on a workshop co-hosted by UNEP-WCMC, the National Geographic Society, Luc Hoffmann Institute, the NatureMap consortium, and the biodiversity hub of the Science-Based Targets Network, identifies some of the best available data, tools and approaches to support the design of ambitious goals for nature, and accurate ways to monitor their progress over the next decade.

As well as identifying some of the key scientific approaches that can inform the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, the report also:

• raises several important issues related to current knowledge gaps,
• emphasises the need to capture multiple dimensions of biodiversity,
• provides linked worksheets on available spatial data on biodiversity, benefits to people, and threats to nature, available indicators to measure progress towards targets and proposed new targets published in the scientific literature
• identifies existing data platforms to support implementation.

Professor Neil Burgess, Chief Scientist at UNEP-WCMC, said: "The next ten years will be absolutely critical for maintaining our living planet. A recent assessment on the global state of nature, the most comprehensive of its kind, found that up to 1 million species face extinction and that the decline of nature undermines progress towards 80% of the Sustainable Development Goals' assessed targets including ones relating to poverty, hunger, and health. It is clear that we must take urgent action, and agreeing ambitious, measurable, science-based goals and targets at the CBD meeting in China in 2020 is the first step."