Global requirements for biodiversity monitoring
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
promotes flexibility in surveillance to allow countries to design
solutions that suit their circumstances. Flexibility is
retained in the CBD
Indicators Framework; this leaves the choice of biodiversity
sampled and presented to each signatory country, whilst providing a
range of indicators that address the CBD requirement for monitoring
of diversity important for its conservation and sustainable
use.
The UK Terrestrial Biodiversity Surveillance
Strategy is closely aligned to the principles for surveillance and
monitoring included within the CBD. It emphasises the need for an
overall, pressure-sensitive picture of status and change,
supplemented with monitoring on a risk basis for rarer species (and
non-native species) and habitats that are covered by international
obligations, conventions and other statutory requirements.
European requirements
As a member of the European Community the UK
is committed through national legislation to implement Community
Directives which include measures for biodiversity. The main
relevant terrestrial directives are for Birds, Habitats and the
Water Framework Directive, and these include commitments on member
states to conserve and monitor particular species and
habitats.
The monitoring required at a national scale is
largely implicit but the Habitats Directive and Water
Framework Directive both have an explicit requirement to carry
out surveillance. There are also reporting requirements for the
species and habitats listed in Annexes to the Habitats Directive,
with the UK and other signatory countries required to report on
their status to the European Union at 6 yearly
intervals. A collation of Directive requirements is
included in the March 2006 JNCC Committee paper,
and the implications for surveillance are analysed in the
Surveillance Framework.
These obligations do not on their own provide
a complete monitoring framework, as they are focussed on rare
species and habitats and we need to use the response of more
widespread biodiversity to help show the impacts of policies.
Drawing from the UK Surveillance Strategy work to date our basic
principles for biodiversity surveillance in relation to European
requirements are the same as those required by the CBD:
- Promoting a complete framework for
biodiversity surveillance, rather than focussing on
obligation;
- Allowing a degree of federalism on what is
reported and how, and a degree of flexibility in
reporting;
- Standardisation of general methods and data
capture formats to allow compilation of reports at a variety of
biogeographic scales