WCC 2020 Res 081 - Activity Report

KBA Partners have advocated around the relevance of KBAs to Target 1 of the Global Biodiversity Framework in many press releases, blogs, and social media. Examples include: https://iucn.org/crossroads-blog/202401/we-must-conserve-right-places-halt-extinction-and-reduce-biodiversity-loss; https://www.keybiodiversityareas.org/kba-news/Improving-national-spatial-planning-for-the-conservation-of-biodiversity; https://www.keybiodiversityareas.org/kba-news/Areas-of-importance-for-biodiversity. They have also advocated for 30x30 planning including supporting the High Ambition Coalition of governments.

KBA Partners successfully advocated for language in Target 1 of the Global Biodiversity Framework that encouraged development of national biodiversity-inclusive spatial plans that incorporated 'areas of particular importance for biodiversity' and 'connectivity'

KBA Partners worked to get an indicator in the Global Biodiversity Framework that was 'The number of national spatial plans incorporating KBAs and connectivity'. This was added as a complementary indicator to the GBF Monitoring Framework in December 2022. Sadly it has been subsequently dropped by the AHTEG group because it wasn't currently being measured. We have evaluated country NBSAPs in 2021 to assess how spatial plans were developed at that time and plan to evaluate incoming NBSAPs that now reference the GBF targets and goals in 2025 to assess how spatial planning has been updated and revised, cataloguing what is planned for the future to assess the incorporation of KBAs and connectivity in plans.

Two papers were published showing the value of integrating Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) in Systematic Conservation Planning (SCP) - Plumptre et al. 2024. The strengths and complementarity of Systematic Conservation Planning and Key Biodiversity Area approaches for spatial planning. Conservation Biology, e14400; and how to define 'Areas of Importance for Biodiversity' - Plumptre et al. 2024.Targeting site conservation to increase the effectiveness of new global biodiversity targets, One Earth, 7, 11-17. The first paper shows some of the issues with how SCP is used to date and how an assessment of KBAs can complement and strengthen plans that use SCP approaches. The second paper evaluates various approaches to defining important sites and concludes that the KBA approach encompasses most of the ideas behind other approaches, is valuable because quantitative criteria make the identification of sites of particular importance for biodiversity objective, repeatable, and comparable around the world, and the breadth of conservation objectives covered mean that the approach is more encompassing. It suggests that harnessing the KBA criteria such that areas of particular importance for biodiversity are defined as: sites that contain significant populations/extents of threatened or geographically restricted species or ecosystems, or that have significant ecological integrity or irreplaceability, significance for the maintenance of biological processes, or provide significant ecological connectivity to maintain populations of species.