Jon Paul Rodríguez

Assessing the Cost of Global Biodiversity and Conservation Knowledge

Knowledge products comprise assessments of authoritative information supported by standards, governance, quality control, data, tools, and capacity building mechanisms. Considerable resources are dedicated to developing and maintaining knowledge products for biodiversity conservation, and they are widely used to inform policy and advise decision makers and practitioners. However, the financial cost of delivering this information is largely undocumented. We evaluated the costs and funding sources for developing and maintaining four global biodiversity and conservation knowledge products: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Protected Planet, and the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas. These are secondary data sets, built on primary data collected by extensive networks of expert contributors worldwide. We estimate that US

Harnessing biodiversity and conservation knowledge products to track the Aichi Targets and Sustainable Development Goals

160 million (range: US

Quantifying species recovery and conservation success to develop an IUCN Green List of Species

116–204 million), plus 293 person-years of volunteer time (range: 278–308 person-years) valued at US

Guidelines for the application of IUCN Red List of Ecosystems Categories and Criteria. Version 1.1

14 million (range US

The use of range size to assess risks to biodiversity from stochastic threats

12–16 million), were invested in these four knowledge products between 1979 and 2013. More than half of this financing was provided through philanthropy, and nearly three-quarters was spent on personnel costs. The estimated annual cost of maintaining data and platforms for three of these knowledge products (excluding the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems for which annual costs were not possible to estimate for 2013) is US

Developing a standardized definition of ecosystem collapse for risk assessment

6.5 million in total (range: US

The contribution of scientific research to conservation planning

6.2–6.7 million). We estimated that an additional US

Clarifying the key biodiversity areas partnership and programme

114 million will be needed to reach pre-defined baselines of data coverage for all the four knowledge products, and that once achieved, annual maintenance costs will be approximately US

Directrices para la aplicación de las categorías y criterios de la Lista Roja de Ecosistemas de UICN

12 million. These costs are much lower than those to maintain many other, similarly important, global knowledge products. Ensuring that biodiversity and conservation knowledge products are sufficiently up to date, comprehensive and accurate is fundamental to inform decision-making for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Thus, the development and implementation of plans for sustainable long-term financing for them is critical.

Lignes directrices pour l’application des critères et catégories de la Liste Rouge des Écosystèmes de l’UICN

For 50 years, the IUCN Commissions, Secretariat, Members such as BirdLife International and partners such as UNEP-WCMC have been mobilising biodiversity and conservation knowledge products, which are fundamentally important for tracking progress towards 10 of the 20 Aichi Targets, and should similarly become so for seven of the emerging 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Each of these knowledge products comprises standards, governance and quality control, data sets, tools, capacity building and ongoing processes for derivation of biodiversity indicators. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, established in 1964, documents extinction risk for more than 76,000 species. Protected Planet, working from the mandate to provide the UN List of Protected Areas, is convened jointly with UNEP and documents ~220,000 protected areas. The Red List of Ecosystems aims to assess the risk of collapse of ecosystems, and is currently being piloted in a number of countries. Key Biodiversity Areas are sites contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity, identified at national levels using globally standard criteria. The system has been developed over the last four decades by BirdLife International and others with ~15,000 sites identified; it is anticipated that IUCN will approve the umbrella standard around these existing approaches in 2015. Of the 55 global indicators mobilised for mid-term assessment of progress towards the Aichi Targets for the fourth Global Biodiversity Outlook, nearly a third were wholly or partly based on these knowledge products (spanning 10 of the Aichi Targets). Indicators derived from these knowledge products will also be applicable to seven of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, annual investment into these knowledge products is currently only a fraction of that necessary to maintain their currency, quality, and scope. If these key indicators towards the Aichi Targets are to be maintained, sustainable long-term financing mechanisms must be established to resource the underlying knowledge products.