Paper 05 for the 6th UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum Meeting. 5-6 Dec., 2012.
Developing UK Indicators for the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. Defra contract WC1301
Developing a UK indicator for ecosystem services: discussion paper.
Key Discussion Points
There is a need to identify options for developing indicators of the status of ecosystems that provide
essential services so that the UK (and devolved administrations) can meet national and international
commitments to monitoring progress towards biodiversity targets – in particular, Aichi Target 14 of the
Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020:
“...By 2020, ecosystems that provide essential services, including services related to
water, and contribute to health, livelihoods and well-being are restored and
safeguarded, taking into account the needs of women, indigenous and local
communities, and the poor and vulnerable...”
Key ecosystem services and the ecosystems that deliver them identified for the UK in the UK National
Ecosystem Assessment, by the UK Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies and consulted experts include:
Ecosystem Service
Soil formation
Carbon sequestration
(Local) climate regulation
Pollination
Pest and disease regulation
Water quality and quantity
Wild fish
Wild species diversity (biodiversity)
Open access recreation
Primary ecosystem(s) that delivers service
Uplands, Woodlands
Woodlands, Peatlands
Urban
Agricultural, Urban
Agricultural, Woodlands
Multiple
Freshwaters, Marine
Multiple
Woodlands, Uplands
Key points for discussion by the ecosystem services working group at the 6th Biodiversity Indicators
Forum meeting include:



Are there other ecosystem services that are essential in the UK context?
o What ecosystems deliver these services?
o Are there other ecosystem services identified in the country biodiversity strategies that
should be developed?
The number of indicators needs to be limited to a reasonable operational number. Therefore,
how should these services be prioritised for indicator development?
What is the strength of evidence linking trends in habitat extent and condition, or species
abundance, distribution and diversity with delivery of the ecosystem service?
o What data is currently available to demonstrate this relationship?
o Can the relationship be quantified? How easy is it to do this?
o Could an indicator reflecting this relationship be developed?
1. Background
The UK government is committed to reporting against global, regional and national frameworks which aim to
address biodiversity loss. Following the adoption of the new Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (2011-2020), a
flexible framework has been proposed to report on the 20 Aichi targets at multiple scales
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Paper 05 for the 6th UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum Meeting. 5-6 Dec., 2012.
(UNEP/CBD/COP/DE/X/21). In response to these significant changes, a review of the UK indicators was
undertaken to ensure that they remain relevant and based on the most robust and reliable data. Based on the
outcomes of this review, the UK Biodiversity Indicator Steering Group (BISG) has proposed an interim set of 24
indicators for reporting against global and European frameworks. A number of the proposed indicators need
refinement and/or development, including those for reporting on the benefits humans receive from the
environment.
The benefits that humans receive from the environment have recently become more widely recognized.
Collectively, these benefits can be referred to as ecosystem services, and typically, four types are recognized:
supporting, provisioning, regulating, cultural (Box 1). A large proportion of these services are essential to
human well-being; without them humans could not survive on earth. Measuring the status of these services is
therefore a critical part of the indicator set.
The Aichi Target with the greatest relevance to monitoring the status of ecosystem services is Target 14:
“...By 2020, ecosystems that provide essential services, including services related to water,
and contribute to health, livelihoods and well-being are restored and safeguarded, taking
into account the needs of women, indigenous and local communities, and the poor and
vulnerable...”
The UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) has been contracted by Defra2 to identify
options for developing indicators of the status of ecosystems that provide essential services in a UK context,
which will presented to the BISG for consideration. Codified methodology will be developed for selected
options.
Box 1: The UK’s Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the benefits provided by ecosystems to humans that make life both possible
and worth living. The UK National Ecosystem Assessment recognized four categories of ecosystem
service:
Supporting services provide the basic infrastructure of life. They include primary production, (the
capture of energy from the sun to produce complex organic compounds), decomposition, soil
formation and the cycling of water and nutrients in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. All other
ecosystem services – regulating, provisioning and cultural – ultimately depend on them. Their
impacts on human well-being are indirect and mostly long-term in nature: the formation of soils, for
example, takes place over decades or centuries. Supporting services are strongly interrelated to each
other and generally underpinned by a vast array of physical, chemical and biological interactions.
Our current understanding of exactly how such ecological interactions influence ecosystem
processes and the delivery of supporting services is limited.
Regulating services provided by ecosystems are extremely diverse. Primary or intermediate
regulating services include the impacts of pollination and regulation of pests and diseases on
provision of ecosystem goods such as food, fuel and fibre. Other regulating services, including
climate and hazard regulation, may act as final ecosystem services, or contribute significantly to final
ecosystem services, such as the amount and quality of available freshwater. As with supporting
services, regulating services are strongly linked to each other and to other kinds of services. Water
quality regulation, for example, is determined primarily by catchment processes and is thereby
linked to other regulating services such as control of soil and air quality and climate regulation, as
well as to supporting services such as nutrient cycling.
1
UNEP/CBD/COP/DE/X/2 (2010). The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity
Targets. [online]. Available from: http://www.cbd.int/decisions/cop/?m=cop-10.
2
Defra contract WC1301.
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Paper 05 for the 6th UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum Meeting. 5-6 Dec., 2012.
Box 1: continued
Provisioning services are manifested in the goods people obtain from ecosystems, such as food and fibre,
fuel in the form of peat, wood or non-woody biomass, and water from rivers, lakes and aquifers. Goods may
be provided by heavily managed ecosystems, such as agricultural and maricultural systems and plantation
forests, or by natural or semi-natural ones, for example in the form of capture fisheries and harvest of other
wild foods. Supplies of ecosystem goods are invariably dependent on many supporting and regulating
services. Provisioning services have historically been a major focus of human activity and are thus closely
linked to cultural services.
Cultural services are derived from environmental settings (places where humans interact with each other
and with nature) that give rise to cultural goods and benefits. In addition to their natural features, such
settings are imbued with the outcomes of interactions between societies, cultures, technologies and
ecosystems over millennia. They comprise an enormous range of so-called ‘green’ and ‘blue’ spaces, such as
gardens, parks, rivers and lakes, the seashore and the wider countryside, including agricultural landscapes
and wilderness areas. Such places provide opportunities for outdoor learning and many kinds of recreation;
exposure to them can have benefits including aesthetic satisfaction and improvements in health and fitness
and an enhanced sense of spiritual wellbeing. People’s engagement with environmental settings is dynamic:
meanings, values and behaviours change over time in response to economic, technological, social, political
and cultural drivers; and change can be rapid and far-reaching in its implications.
Source: The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (2011). The UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis
of the Key Findings Report. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge.
2. Progress to Date
A preliminary list of 202 potential indicators and datasets for ecosystem services were compiled from the UK
National Ecosystem Assessment3 (UK NEA), suggestions from an online survey of UK ecosystem service
practitioners, indicators suggested at a workshop on measuring and monitoring ecosystem services in
England’s Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) convened by the Biodiversity & Ecosystem Service Sustainability
(BESS) group, and those used in the CBD 4th National Report. UK specialists in the field of ecosystem services
then met at a workshop convened by UNEP-WCMC with the aim to:




Explore the possibilities of developing indicators of ecosystem services for the UK
Explore what data is available to support the use of these indicators
Use agreed selection criteria to prioritise indicators (Annex 1)
Select 3-5 indicators to be presented to the BISG as options for an indicator of ecosystem services,
keeping in mind the importance of being able to create the indicator now, using existing data, and
being able to update them within a relative short time-frame.
However a number of conceptual issues arose during the workshop, and despite extended discussion,
consensus was not reached on:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Identifying essential services in a UK context;
Whether to develop indicators around habitats or services;
How the indicator(s) should reflect the relationship between ecosystem services and biodiversity – i.e.
should the indicator be an indicator of biodiversity that has an ecosystem service component? Should
the indicator be an indicator of ecosystem services that has a biodiversity component? Should the
indicator be an indicator that shows the role of biodiversity in ecosystem services?
Whether the indicator should measure trends in natural capital, and/or the stock, flow or benefit of
an ecosystem service; and
3
The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (2011). The UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis of the Key
Findings Report. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge.
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Paper 05 for the 6th UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum Meeting. 5-6 Dec., 2012.
5.
What are the key policy questions/concerns in regards to ecosystem services; and how do we ensure
that indicators stay relevant, particularly if some ecosystem services that are currently stable start to
deteriorate in the future?
The continued debate, expression of ideas and opinions around these issues precluded a set of indicator
options being proposed by the time the workshop concluded.
Keeping these useful discussions in mind, but recognizing the urgency to develop suitable indicators to meet
international commitments, a further examination of the UK NEA and the UK country biodiversity strategies
were made. This, plus ongoing discussions with specialists on related projects has lead to the identification of a
preliminary list of biodiversity related ecosystem services considered to be of key importance to the UK, and
the ecosystems (or habitats) that deliver them (Table 1).
Table 1. Ecosystem services, and the ecosystems that deliver them, considered to be of key importance to the
UK.
Ecosystem Service
Primary ecosystem(s) that delivers service
Soil formation
Uplands, Woodlands
Carbon sequestration
Woodlands, Peatlands
(Local) climate regulation
Urban
Pollination
Agricultural, Urban
Pest and disease regulation
Agricultural, Woodlands
Water quality and quantity
Multiple
Wild fish
Freshwaters, Marine
Wild species diversity (biodiversity)
Multiple
Open access recreation
Woodlands, Uplands
It is felt that this list of services and habitats serves as a useful starting point for further discussion on how a
UK-related indicator(s) for Aichi Target 14 can be developed.
3. Discussion Points
To assist further consultation amongst ecosystem service and indicator specialists to develop indicator options
of the status of ecosystems that provide essential services to the UK for consideration by the BISG, it would be
helpful if the working group for ecosystem services at the 6 th Biodiversity Indicators Forum could provide input
on the following:




Does the list of services presented in Table 1 adequately cover the services of key importance to the
UK?
Are there other ecosystem services that are essential in the UK context?
o What ecosystems deliver these services?
o Are there other ecosystem services identified in the country biodiversity strategies that
should be developed?
The number of indicators needs to be limited to a reasonable operational number. Therefore, how
should these services be prioritised for indicator development?
What is the strength of evidence linking trends in habitat extent and condition, or species abundance,
distribution and diversity with delivery of the ecosystem service?
o What data is currently available to demonstrate this relationship?
o Can the relationship be quantified? How easy is it to do this?
o Could an indicator reflecting this relationship be developed?
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Paper 05 for the 6th UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum Meeting. 5-6 Dec., 2012.
4. Annexes
Annex 1: Selection criteria that will be used to prioritise indicator options.
Table A1. Evaluation scores for indicator options. The criteria build upon that provided in the Defra specification for WC1301
(Developing UK indicators for the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020) with reference to CBD4, Streamlining European
Biodiversity Indicators (SEBI)5, and Biodiversity Indicators.
Criteria
Levels
Options
A
1. Transparency and
auditability
1. Data unavailable to public
2. Limited summary data available
3. Full raw/primary data set and metadata available
2. Verification
1. Unverified data
2. Limited verification checks in place
3. Detailed verification in place and documented
3. Frequency of
updates
1. Sporadic
2. Every 3-5 years
Data issues
3. Annual or biennial
4. Security
1. Future data collection discontinued
2. Future data collection uncertain
3. Future data collection secure
5. Spatial coverage
1. Partial UK coverage
2. UK coverage, some bias
3. Full UK coverage, including adjacent marine areas, if and where appropriate
6. Temporal
coverage
1. Insufficient data for assessment (<5 years)
2. Sufficient data to assess progress (5-10 years)
3. Long (10+ years) and short-term trends can be assessed
7. Capacity for
disaggregation
1. Cannot be disaggregated
2. Can be disaggregated but data quality and assessment issues arise
Methodology
3. Can be disaggregated to Country level and assessed
8. Transparency and
soundness
1. Methodology not available
2. Methodology available but not peer reviewed
3. Methodology published and peer reviewed
9. Precision
1. Unknown precision or precision quantifiable but unable to statistically assess trends
2. Uncertainty quantifiable and signal-to-noise ratio allows for statistical assessment of trends
Indicator characteristics
3. Uncertainty quantifiable and signal-to-noise ratio allows for year-on-year statistical assessments
10. Policy relevance:
progress towards
Biodiversity 2020
targets (CBD, EU, UK,
country)
1. No clear relationship with 2020 targets
11. Biodiversity
relevant
1. Indicator is a proxy for biodiversity change
2. Relates indirectly to progress towards 2020 targets
3. Relates directly to progress towards 2020 targets
2. Indicator directly addresses biodiversity and relates indirectly to state, pressures, benefits and/or responses
3. Indicator directly addresses biodiversity and relates directly to state, pressures, benefits and/or responses
12. Cause-effect
relationship
1. Unknown relationship between indicator and issue of concern
2. Accepted theory of relationship between indicator and issue of concern
3. Quantifiable relationship between indicator and issue of concern
13. Sensitive to
change
1. Indicator does not detect changes in systems within timeframes and spatial scales that are relevant to decision-making
2. Indicator detects changes in systems only within timeframes or only on spatial scales that are relevant to decision-making
3. Indicator detects changes in systems within timeframes and spatial scales that are relevant to decision-making
14. Human-induced
vs. natural changes
1. Indicator cannot discriminate between human-induced and natural changes
2. Indicator potentially discriminates between human-induced and natural changes
3. Indicator clearly discriminates between human-induced and natural changes
15. Communication
1. Indicator is complex, difficult to communicate and not accepted by all major stakeholders
2. Indicator is complex and difficult to communicate but accepted by all major stakeholders
3. Indicator is simple, easy to communicate and accepted by all major stakeholders
Sub-score: Data issues
Sub-score: Methodology
Sub-score: Indicator characteristics
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5
UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/9/10 (2003). Monitoring and indicators: designing national-level monitoring programmes and indicators. UN Environnent Programme.
http://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/sbstta/sbstta-09/official/sbstta-09-10-en.pdf
EEA (2007). Halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010: proposal for a first set of indicators to monitor progress in Europe. EEA Technical report No 11/2007.
http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/technical_report_2007_11
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B
C
Paper 05 for the 6th UK Biodiversity Indicators Forum Meeting. 5-6 Dec., 2012.
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