Contact details
Responsible Statistician: Clare Betts
Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at:
enviro.statistics@defra.gov.uk
or by post to:
Environmental Statistics and Reporting team
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Mallard House
Kings Pool, 1-2 Peasholme Green
York
YO1 7PX
Introduction
Biodiversity is the variety of all life on Earth. It includes all species of animals and plants, and the natural systems that support them. Biodiversity matters because it supports the vital benefits we get from the natural environment. It contributes to our economy, our health and wellbeing, and it enriches our lives.
The UK biodiversity indicators have been developed in a co-operative fashion, with input from government, statutory agencies and public bodies, non-governmental organisations, and academic institutes.
Indicators are one of the means by which the UK can communicate the results of monitoring and surveillance. The audience for indicators is extremely broad, from the general public to all parts of the private and public sectors.
Indicators are useful tools for summarising and communicating broad trends. They are not intended to incorporate all the relevant information available in the UK. They are best seen, as their name suggests, as indicative of wider changes.
The Biodiversity Indicators are dependent on a wide variety of data, provided by government, research bodies, and the voluntary sector. The presentation and assessment of the indicators has been verified by the data providers, and the production and editing of the indicators has been overseen by government statisticians in Defra.
The UK Biodiversity Indicators are an accredited official statistics compendium, otherwise known as National Statistics. These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in February 2012. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’.
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.
See Official Statistics for further details.
Global Biodiversity Framework – Convention on Biological Diversity
The UK Government is a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The UK Biodiversity Indicators are aligned to the goals and targets (the 'Aichi targets') agreed in 2010 and set out in the CBD Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 (PDF).
These Aichi targets have recently been replaced by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), which was agreed by the 15th Conference of the parties (CoP15) in Montreal in December 2022. The KMGBF consists of new set of global targets, indicators to measure progress against the targets, and a reporting framework. The key elements of this are four goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030. All Parties to the CBD are expected to report on their progress towards these goals and targets in 2026 and 2029.
Each of the four countries in the UK have their own set of biodiversity indicators that assess progress to targets set out in national biodiversity strategies. These indicator sets will be reviewed in light of the KMGBF and the new global goals and targets it includes. The Biodiversity Indicators production team are currently working alongside the devolved administrations and Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies (SNCBs) to review the existing country-level indicator sets against the UK Biodiversity Indicators (UKBIs), noting areas where UK indicators can be disaggregated to country level and where country-level data can be aggregated to a national level. These findings are currently being used to assess whether there is potential to align UK and country-level indicators more closely.
JNCC has been working alongside Defra and the devolved administrations and SNCBs to review the KMGBF goals, targets and headline indicators against the current suite of UK Biodiversity Indicators, and the biodiversity indicators produced by each of the four countries. A proposal for a new set of UKBIs to report progress towards the KMGBF goals and targets is expected to be finalised in 2024.
Latest update to the UK Biodiversity Indicators
UK Biodiversity Indicators 2023 was published on 14 November 2023. The 2023 publication comprises updates to 18 indicators.
Previous versions of the UK Biodiversity Indicators
The following online and summary PDF versions are available from JNCC's Resource Hub and The National Archives.
2022
UK Biodiversity Indicators 2022 was published on 14 December 2022, with a reduced set of indicators updated, and was subsequently revised and republished on 25 May 2023 with an update to indicator C4a (Status of priority species: relative abundance).
2021
UK Biodiversity Indicators 2021 was published on 20 October 2021, and subsequently revised and republished on 28 October 2021, in response to an update to indicator A4 (Global biodiversity impacts of UK economic activity / sustainable consumption).
2020
Updated 15 October 2020
2019
Updated 5 September 2019, revised 5 December 2019
2018
Updated 19 July 2018.
2017
Updated 3 August 2017.
2015/16
Updated 19 January 2016
- Summary version (Note: Indicator C9a Animal Genetic Resources) was corrected and updated on 30 November 2016)
- Online 2015 version
2014
Updated 4 December 2014.
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
- Online only 2008 version (in the National Archives)
2007
Published: .