From data to decision: leveraging essential variables in standardizing biodiversity and ecosystem services monitoring and reporting

Fragmented systems for monitoring and assessing biodiversity and ecosystem services limit the ability to track progress at local and national scales in international multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). This greatly challenges coordinated actions to meet agreed-upon global commitments. Filling this gap requires integrated and concerted design of data-to-decision workflows. The Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and Essential Ecosystem Service Variables (EESVs) are tools that can coordinate structured and consistent monitoring, generate harmonized and scalable data products, and facilitate reporting that is useful for multiple purposes. Specifically, EBV/EESV data products are intended to synthesize information to serve the needs of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA), and assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) while also informing regional, national, and sub-national conservation policy. This integrative approach works if local data collection is designed to be interoperable, and it is fundamental to improve models, forecasts, and indicators required in key policy and decision processes. Through application cases, we demonstrate the use of EBVs and EESVs in national assessments and scenario analyses for strategic policy and spatial planning with scalable and repeatable workflows from primary data to indicators for decision support.