One Earth
Volume 3, Issue 4, 23 October 2020, Pages 462-474
Journal home page for One Earth

Perspective
Effective Biodiversity Monitoring Needs a Culture of Integration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.010Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Summary

Despite conservation commitments, most countries still lack large-scale biodiversity monitoring programs to track progress toward agreed targets. Monitoring program design is frequently approached from a top-down, data-centric perspective that ignores the socio-cultural context of data collection. A rich landscape of people and organizations, with a diversity of motivations and expertise, independently engages in biodiversity monitoring. This diversity often leads to complementarity in activities across places, time periods, and taxa. In this Perspective, we propose a framework for aligning different efforts to realize large-scale biodiversity monitoring through a networked design of stakeholders, data, and biodiversity schemes. We emphasize the value of integrating independent biodiversity observations in conjunction with a backbone of structured core monitoring, thereby fostering broad ownership and resilience due to a strong partnership of science, society, policy, and individuals. Furthermore, we identify stakeholder-specific barriers and incentives to foster joint collaboration toward effective large-scale biodiversity monitoring.

Keywords

biodiversity monitoring
distributed expertise
integration
policy
stakeholder network
society
citizen science
stakeholder engagement

Cited by (0)