8 July 2016: The UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) has issued its 2015 Annual Report, which highlights how the Centre enables policymakers to put biodiversity “at the heart of decision making.”

The report highlights UNEP-WCMC efforts in 2015 to identify and develop indicators to track global biodiversity change in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It explains that 11 such indicators are being considered as official ones by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators. In addition, where suitable indicators do not yet exist, UNEP-WCMC has developed new methodologies such as the Wetlands Extent Trends (WET) index, which compiles time-series records to assess change in the extent of natural wetlands at different scales.

The annual report also details how UNEP-WCMC has helped countries account for links between biodiversity and development. It discusses its assistance to Botswana, Namibia, Seychelles and Uganda in integrating biodiversity and development considerations into national planning. On using models to link biodiversity, climate and agriculture, UNEP-WCMC applied a land-use model to support the assessment of possible impacts of policy options on emissions, agricultural production and biodiversity in Brazil.

In an effort to increase economic literacy in the environmental debate, UNEP-WCMC helped develop technical guidance to assist government statisticians with the collection and organization of data regarding the status and trends of ecosystems and species diversity. The goal was to help policymakers link changes in natural capital with changes in economic activity.

On improving extractive industry standards and corporate decision-making processes with regard to the industry’s impacts on biodiversity, UNEP-WCMC has: undertaken regional assessments of overlaps between biodiversity conservation priorities and resource extraction; developed standards for assessing and mitigating the biodiversity impacts of extractive processes; and explored the governance and policy structures required for more effective corporate biodiversity management.

In order to expand high-quality data on protected areas and facilitate access to information, improvements were made to ProtectedPlanet.net, the online interface of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). The upgrades included streamlining the download process, making statistics easier to find and updating data on a monthly basis. Such improvements resulted in an eight-fold increase in dataset downloads (from 6,000 in 2014 to 47,348 in 2015).

Regarding enhancing implementation of international agreements, UNEP-WCMC promoted increased collaboration and cooperation in implementation, including by: helping to organize meetings in 2014 and 2015 that resulted in a paper setting out 28 options for increased cooperation in implementing biodiversity-related conventions; reviewing capacity-building and awareness-raising needs for national-level implementation of biodiversity-related conventions; and undertaking a preliminary review identifying how biodiversity-related agreements relate to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

UNEP-WCMC is also supporting UNEP’s presence in China, including by supporting Chinese environmental decision-making in: business and biodiversity; ecosystem service assessment and natural-capital accounting; climate change; protected areas; and wildlife trade. In addition, guidance will be developed to grow China’s Business and Biodiversity Partnership. [UNEP-WCMC Press Release] [Publication: UNEP-WCMC Annual Report]