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Biodiversity loss continues at an alarming rate1. Previously agreed global goals and targets have been unsuccessful in reversing this trend2.

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), agreed by 195 countries under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in December 2022, aims to galvanize transformative action across society, through a shared vision, mission, goals and targets3. The parties to the CBD agreed that the GBF is: “a framework for all—for the whole of government and the whole of society. Its success requires political will and recognition at the highest level of government and relies on action and cooperation by all levels of government and by all actors of society”3. The parties also agreed that the GBF would be based on cocreation of knowledge and that it should recognize the cultural diversity of citizens and Indigenous Peoples (IP) and reflect them in the choice of methodological approaches, combining technological tools with traditional knowledge4,5. However, although, for example, more than a quarter of the world’s mammal species are found in areas owned, used, managed or occupied by IP and local communities (LC)6,7, their voice in the GBF negotiations was limited8.

The 23 agreed targets of the GBF are grouped into (1) ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’ (targets 1–8), (2) ‘meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing’ (targets 9–13) and (3) ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (targets 14–23). Progress towards the agreed goals and targets under the GBF will be tracked and assessed through a monitoring framework9. The monitoring framework contains 26 headline indicators, which are a minimum set of high-level indicators that capture the overall scope of the goals and targets of the GBF. Ten of these are listed twice, once for a goal and once for a target. The monitoring framework also contains 64 component indicators, which can be used to measure specific elements of each goal and target of the GBF; and a further 265 complementary indicators, which can be used to provide more indepth information on implementation of each goal and target.

Parties to the CBD will need to report progress against the headline indicators and have the option to report on component and complementary indicators, based on national needs and preferences. Some countries may also wish to report on nationally agreed indicators9. During discussions relating to the selection of indicators, parties to the CBD have often raised concerns over the feasibility of gathering data for national reporting, for example, because of lack of capacity or financial resources; and they have noted the need for capacity development and support10. These challenges are further enhanced as little is known about the natural world and the number of scientists is small11,12.

Citizens, especially IP and LC who use the environment every day, hold extensive yet often underused knowledge on the world’s environment13. The concept of involving citizens in monitoring stems from a democratic, community-driven culture, where the emphasis is on inclusive approaches, comanagement and community-driven conservation13. In most countries, citizen-gathered data on changes in biodiversity greatly exceed that collected by professional scientists employed by government agencies. For example, there has been a huge expansion of smart-phone enabled birding in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Indonesia and India (https://ebird.org/home). The challenge for countries is, thus, to find ways to compile and use these citizen data if they are not already doing this.

There are several benefits of involving citizens in monitoring beyond data provision. It can deliver tangible conservation outcomes, and it can increase engagement and user satisfaction and, importantly, simultaneously reduce resource extraction with an effect size equal to payments for environmental services programmes and protected areas14,15. It can also lead to, for example, zoning of land for different uses, local time or area closures, changes in resource extraction methods or gear and changes in quotas or seasons16,17.

Furthermore, engaging citizens in monitoring also may be beneficial to IP and LC. Participation can empower citizens in resource management, cognitively, politically, socially and economically13, enabling conflict resolution and strengthening confidence and self-determination17,18,19. It provides an opportunity for IP and LC to share their insights and have their ‘voices’ heard13,16,17. Often, access to natural resources is central to IP and LC livelihoods and therefore their engagement in resource management is critical for conservation and sustainable development.

In this paper, we evaluate whether IP, LC and other citizen groups (hereafter ‘citizens’) could complement scientist-led monitoring to assist measuring the indicators under the GBF. We use our published typology of monitoring systems20 to undertake our evaluation. By using these four separate, statistically defined categories of monitoring types (explained in more detail below) as a framework for our evaluation, we aim to provide recommendations on how different groups of people, including citizens, can contribute to GBF monitoring. We compare our results with assessments made for the previous CBD strategic plan and Aichi biodiversity targets and 11 other multilateral environmental agreements (Methods). Finally, we discuss how monitoring approaches that include citizens’ perspectives might augment scientist-led methods, while also raising environmental awareness among both citizens and policy-makers.

Conceptual framing

We previously defined a typology of different monitoring types with varying relative roles of local stakeholders and professional scientists, based on a statistical analysis of published environmental monitoring programmes20 (Fig. 1). The four categories are as follows. (1) Autonomous local monitoring: monitoring by local stakeholders, set up on their own initiative and fully locally managed and resourced; scientists are not involved. (2) Community-based monitoring: monitoring initiated by local stakeholders in collaboration with outsiders where local stakeholders ask questions, identify priorities and design the systems and they also collect, process and interpret the data. (3) Contributory citizen science: monitoring where local stakeholders are involved in data collection but other activities are carried out by professional scientists21,22. (4) Scientist-executed monitoring: monitoring undertaken by professional scientists, with no involvement of local stakeholders. This spectrum of monitoring approaches mirrors the devolution of responsibility in different approaches to natural resource management13. All four monitoring types generate credible data but they vary considerably in (1) their cost, (2) requirement for expertise, (3) promptness of decision-making, (4) potential for enhancing local stakeholder capacity and (5) capacity to inform international monitoring, although exceptions can be found13 (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Conceptual framing.
Fig. 1: Conceptual framing.
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Role of citizens and professional scientists and variation in characteristics across four key categories of monitoring types13,20,41. aAn exception is AI-powered alerts which may detect, for example, forest fires, gunshots or changes in online wildlife trade in real time, enabling rapid decision-making. Figure adapted with permission from ref. 13 under a Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0.

Previously, we examined the potential for citizen involvement in monitoring the CBD strategic plan for biodiversity 2011–2020 and its Aichi targets and 11 other international environmental agreements and entities20. We found that community-based monitoring and citizen science (or community science) approaches could enrich the monitoring of progress toward 117 (63%) of 186 indicators of the 12 international environmental agreements. Citizen involvement was particularly useful for indicators about ‘status’, ‘pressure’ and ‘ecosystem integrity and ecosystem goods and services’. In a complementary study, ref. 23 reviewed the metadata and workplans of the indicators of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and found that citizens are ‘already contributing’ or ‘could contribute’ data to the monitoring of 81 (33%) of 244 indicators of the SDGs.

Understanding the suitability of monitoring types with varying relative roles of local stakeholders and professional scientists is critical when establishing environmental monitoring frameworks, yet government agencies and international organizations often develop monitoring frameworks without attention to this issue. Paragraph 6 of the GBF monitoring framework highlights the importance of involving citizens in the monitoring process as it “invites Parties and relevant organizations to support community-based monitoring and information systems and citizen science and their contributions to the implementation of the monitoring framework for the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”9. However, there is a concern that implementation of the GBF will have only a limited involvement of citizens24,25 and that citizens will also have a limited involvement in monitoring progress26. We seek to address this latter concern through this paper.

Conceptual challenges and opportunities to citizen engagement

There are several conceptual challenges to citizen engagement in GBF monitoring. First, government agencies can be sceptical about data quality derived from citizen science and are often reluctant to use data they have not themselves been involved in collecting and verifying16,27. However, governmental scientists and citizens in well-designed monitoring programmes have been shown to produce similar results on status of and trends in species and natural resources when there is no mismatch between the temporal and spatial scales, timing or geographical area13. Second, there may be limitations in the ability of government agencies to access, understand and act on data and findings16,27. It will be important to develop capacity among government staff in incorporating citizen-derived information on biodiversity in their decision-making and establish specific policies demanding government use of data from the public. Third, participant recruitment and retention may be challenging; it must be based on motivations and interest; for many participants, however, there is a strong incentive if the concept of their voice in society has changed because of the effort16,27. Fourth, lack of compatibility between data formats of scientists’ programmes and citizens’ programmes can be an obstacle; managers of scientific data repositories must adjust their data formats so they become receptive to data from both community-based monitoring and contributory citizen science data sources. Fifth, failure to respect intellectual property and free, prior and informed consent on the part of governmental scientists can reduce the receptiveness of communities to proposed collaborations. Finally, insufficient organizational support structures from the community level up to the government level are a barrier; and the building of sustainable funding structures to support community-based monitoring and citizen science is needed.

Results and discussion

In this section, we present the results of the various analyses and then immediately discuss these so that the logical flow between each component of the work is maintained. This is followed by a general discussion of the issues raised in this paper and their policy relevance.

Potential for citizen involvement in GBF monitoring

Across all indicators

Our analysis suggests that for 30% of the 365 agreed indicators, citizens could contribute both in data collection and analysis, whereas 51% of the indicators could benefit from citizen involvement in data collection only (Table 1). Eight experts, who completed a spot test of a random sample of the indicators, were in moderate agreement with our assignments of suitable monitoring approaches (Kappa coefficient κ = 0.45; n = 140; Supplementary Table 1). These results suggest ways in which data collection by citizens might be able to augment and enhance the data being used to track progress towards the delivery of the GBF. For 88% of the indicators, we could name specific or closely related examples of monitoring programmes (n = 365), which we interpreted as supporting our results (examples in Box 1).

Table 1 Proportion of indicators for tracking implementation of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that can be assessed using the monitoring approaches
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Additionally, we found that 23% of the 365 indicators agreed under the GBF can be measured by citizens autonomously, without any involvement of professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations (Table 1). However, because these programmes are self-established and managed, they are unlikely to feed their data into the mechanisms established to track implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. At the other extreme, almost all (98%) of the 365 indicators can be measured by professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations, without involving citizens. These monitoring datasets are likely to feed into government mechanisms to report on GBF progress.

Three broad groupings are recognized across the 23 targets of the GBF, each with associated indicators. We show that citizens have a higher opportunity for contributing data and interpretation for the indicators within groups 1 and 2 of these targets, covering ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’ (targets 1–8) and ‘meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing’ (targets 9–13; Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 1). Moreover, we find that targets 5, 6, 9, 12, 22 and 23 also have the most possibilities for monitoring by citizens (Fig. 2). The group 3 targets cover ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (targets 14–23) and these have lower opportunities for citizen involvement.

Fig. 2: Proportion of indicators across 22 targets of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that can be assessed using the monitoring approaches.
Fig. 2: Proportion of indicators across 22 targets of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that can be assessed using the monitoring approaches.
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Targets are grouped into (1) ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’ (targets 1–8), (2) ‘meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing’ (targets 9–13); and (3) ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (targets 14–23). No indicators are available for target 20.

By headline, component and complementary indicators

Headline indicators are the minimum set of indicators that all the 195 parties to the CBD will need to report progress against. We show that 24 headline indicators from 3 GBF goals and 12 GBF targets are amenable to citizen engagement in their monitoring and the remaining 12 indicators from one GBF goal and 7 GBF targets are not suitable for citizen engagement (Supplementary Data). Headline indicators suitable to citizen engagement in their monitoring fall within the topics: fish stocks, coastal eutrophication, forest management, red lists (species and ecosystems), invasive species, benefits from ecosystems, proportion of human population in traditional occupations and extent of natural ecosystems (including areas restored, sustainably managed or protected areas). They encompass terrestrial, freshwater and marine biomes—and they involve all the major taxonomic groups of animals, plants and fungi. For headline indicators amenable to citizen involvement, citizen measurements would be unlikely to stand alone. In most cases, they would need to be used in conjunction with professional scientists’ and governmental statistical organizations’ measurements. Examples of monitoring programmes with citizen engagement which can contribute data or analysis to monitoring these GBF headline indicators from the Global South and North are provided in Supplementary Table 2.

Looking across all the headline, component and complementary indicators of the GBF (Fig. 3), we see limited differences in the degree that citizens can be involved in monitoring efforts. However, we find that complementary indicators have lower opportunities for citizen involvement compared with headline and component indicators. Professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations can assess most indicators.

Fig. 3: Proportion of indicators across three categories of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that can be assessed using the monitoring approaches.
Fig. 3: Proportion of indicators across three categories of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that can be assessed using the monitoring approaches.
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Proportion of headline indicators (n = 36, including 10 listed twice), component (n = 64) and complementary indicators (n = 265), for tracking implementation of the Kunming–Montreal GBF, that can be assessed using autonomous local monitoring programmes, community-based monitoring programmes, contributory citizen science programmes and scientist-executed monitoring programmes.

Constraints to citizen involvement

Across all indicators

Analysis of the main constraints to citizen involvement in monitoring progress in delivery of the GBF goals and targets shows that (1) calculating the indicators can be analytically complex (Table 1; 54% of 365 indicators), (2) requires a detailed knowledge of administrative or regulatory aspects in the country (48%), (3) requires area-based data such as using geographical information system data or remote sensing (36%), (4) requires a national overview (27%) or (5) requires data from museums or herbaria (7%; examples in Box 2). Our eight independent experts from around the world were in fair agreement with this identification of main constraints to citizen involvement in monitoring the indicators of the GBF (κ = 0.35; n = 175; Supplementary Table 1).

By headline, component and complementary indicators

Dividing the results by headline, component and complementary indicators shows limited differences in the constraints to citizen involvement (Fig. 4a) but when looking across the three broad groupings of targets, there are major differences. The main constraint to citizen involvement in monitoring progress against the indicators of group 3 which covers ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (targets 14–23) is not that they are analytically complex but that they often require a legislative overview (81% of 77 indicators) or a national overview (66%; Fig. 4b). Additionally, the requirement for area-based data is a constraint to the indicators of group 1 ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’ (targets 1–8; 51% of 121 indicators; Fig. 4b) and not those of groups 2 and 3.

Fig. 4: Proportion of indicators for tracking implementation of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that, for different reasons, are constrained in involving citizens.
Fig. 4: Proportion of indicators for tracking implementation of the Kunming–Montreal GBF that, for different reasons, are constrained in involving citizens.
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a,b, Constraints shown are those involving citizens in monitoring within the headline, component and complementary indicators (a) and within the three groupings of targets ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’ (targets 1–8), ‘meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing’ (targets 9–13), and ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (targets 14–23) (b).

Citizen opportunities across environmental agreements

We show considerable variation in the potential for citizens to both collect and analyse monitoring data across a variety of international entities and agreements, including multilateral environment agreements (Fig. 5). Overall, the GBF monitoring framework is one of the least able to facilitate citizen involvement. The indicators for the targets of the previous CBD strategic plan (Aichi targets) and four other entities and multilateral environmental agreements (Indian Ocean—South-East Asian Marine Turtle Memorandum of Understanding (IOSEA), Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP), Streamlining European 2010 Biodiversity Indicators (SEBI) and the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar)) are better suited to involving citizens in both collecting and analysing monitoring data. Looking in more detail at the GBF compared with other entities and international agreements, we can see that the suitability of GBF indicators to involving citizens in monitoring is at the same level as the indicators of four other agreements (Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), World Heritage Convention (WHC) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)). Moreover, the GBF indicators were more suited to involving citizens in collecting or analysing data than the indicators for three other international agreements (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and Convention on Migratory Species (CMS); Fig. 5).

Fig. 5: Proportion of indicators of the Kunming–Montreal GBF and the Aichi biodiversity targets and those of other environmental entities and agreements that are suitable for citizen involvement.
Fig. 5: Proportion of indicators of the Kunming–Montreal GBF and the Aichi biodiversity targets and those of other environmental entities and agreements that are suitable for citizen involvement.
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Indicators are shown for the Kunming–Montreal GBF and the Aichi biodiversity targets and those of 11 other environmental entities and agreements20 that are suitable for citizen involvement in data gathering (x axis) and data analysis (y axis). The dashed cross lines indicate 50% values for each axis. Indicators with high values on both axes are most amenable to monitoring approaches with citizen involvement. The number of indicators is shown in brackets. For abbreviations, see ‘Results and discussion’. Figure adapted with permission from ref. 20 under a Creative Commons license CC BY 3.0. Credit: binocular icon, L. Prado, Noun Project; analysis icon, A. Uddin, Noun Project.

General discussion

We have shown that governments might augment their own data used for reporting against the GBF to the CBD by developing collaborations with IP, LCs and citizen scientists to track progress towards national targets. This builds on previous literature which show that community-based monitoring and citizen science approaches could enrich the monitoring of progress towards the indicators of 12 international environmental agreements20 and the SDGs23,28,29. Here, we discuss the ways in which countries could do more to involve citizens in monitoring internationally agreed targets and associated indicators. We also outline how citizens themselves can get more involved, challenges of unequal power that will need to be overcome and what the results of our paper mean for the implementation of the GBF up to 2030.

Steps for countries to facilitate citizen engagement

One way of engaging IP and LC and ensuring respect for their rights could be to explicitly set collaborations with IP and LC, following free, prior and informed consent processes and agree on their role in monitoring natural resources30. Using data from community-based monitoring and citizen science programmes would require that IP, LC and citizen science institutions gather and maintain time series of datasets on those indicators that are amenable to collection by community-based monitoring and citizen science programmes and synthesize them within national summaries.

Responsibility for the GBF monitoring process lies with the national governments. Establishing citizen engagement in GBF monitoring therefore requires concerned efforts by the countries’ environmental agencies31,32,33. Key steps which environment agencies could take include a series of actions, partly already explored in refs. 34,35,36. First, countries could appoint staff responsible for citizen involvement through community-based monitoring and citizen science in the agency; include citizen engagement in biodiversity monitoring in their job descriptions; nominate and give resources to institutional ‘champions’ or a working group of active practitioners within the environment agency to compile and disseminate best practices; and promote experience exchange and enhance visibility. Second, countries could team up with and promote cooperative approaches, and partnerships, with IP and LC and citizen science institutions with existing capacities within citizen engagement in GBF monitoring, for example, to scale up, extend and sustain existing initiatives across the country, to enhance mechanisms for uptake of citizen data into decision-making, and to provide capacity-building activities where necessary. Third, countries could create and maintain a real-time communication entry point (for example, web portal and mobile phone) for community-based monitoring and citizen science in the environment agency; through this portal the public can find projects they are interested in, facilitating engagement and collaboration and giving visibility and recognition to projects. Fourth, countries could publish guidelines and methods to facilitate the use of citizen data in GBF monitoring and reporting using appropriate languages. Fifth, countries could embed community-based monitoring and citizen science in the environment agency mandate, mainstream it across the environment agency’s activities and create a consistent and comprehensive approach towards citizen engagement in GBF monitoring within the environment agency. Finally, countries could encourage public and private actors to earmark professional human and financial resources for community-based monitoring and citizen science that support GBF monitoring and environment agency goals, including financial resources for those communities that would be engaging in collecting and interpreting data.

What citizens could do to engage in GBF monitoring

In many countries, IP, LC and citizen science institutions are already gathering time series of datasets that could contribute to monitor the GBF indicators (Supplementary Table 2). If they are interested in contributing to the official GBF reporting, they could engage in dialogue with their national CBD focal point (https://www.cbd.int/doc/lists/nfp-cbd.pdf) or with international IP, LC and citizen science institutions about the use of the data and syntheses in monitoring GBF and synthesize their data for relevant GBF indicators.

Managing government–citizen power dynamics in monitoring

When monitoring programmes are based on Indigenous and local knowledge systems, it is important to recognize that asymmetric power issues often arise37. Attention therefore needs to be paid to establishing suitable terms of cooperation, respecting intellectual property rights, data sovereignty and customary law38,39, as well as the specific data-management requirements of Indigenous knowledge18,40. By engaging IP, LC and citizen scientists in monitoring, governments could be accused of offloading monitoring and reporting requirements, together with their costs, onto local people. For that reason financial resources and technical capacity are required and a collaboration between local governments/national governments and the relevant communities is needed. When the data provided by the IP, LC and citizen scientists are directly connected with rules and regulations for the use of resources, their provision of data may sometimes undermine their own access to and use of those resources—or even put the IP and LC and citizen scientists at risk of persecution17. Governments could seek collaborations with IP and LCs following free, prior and informed consent processes, ensuring that they have ownership of the process and outputs derived from monitoring and setting agreements among government institutions and relevant actors (IP and LCs) for the use of the data.

Relevance of results to GBF implementation

The GBF is a multilateral environment agreement where decisions are taken by parties who are national governments and the EU. As such the procedures of the GBF and the ways that the agreement is being operationalized are important for the uptake of the findings of this paper. At the broad policy level, section C of the GBF3 notes some general considerations for its implementation, including, for example, on the contribution and rights of IP and LC, different value systems and taking a ‘whole-of-society’ approach.

In relation to the GBF monitoring framework, the ad hoc technical expert group on indicators that was established by Parties at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD has provided some further guidance on the consideration of section C of the GBF in the monitoring provisions. This guidance was submitted to parties for their review at the 26th meeting of the CBD subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice held in May 2024 in Nairobi. It notes that there are no specific metrics and measures for section C. The guidance therefore includes provisions on: ensuring that there is appropriate disaggregation of the headline indicators through the use of component and complementary indicators; inclusion of indicators that are important for IP and LC in relation to biodiversity and on ensuring that the monitoring process is adapted to include participatory processes to collate data to populate indicators.

Integrating guidance on the implementation of section C of the GBF will be essential for the successful implementation of the global monitoring. Evidence of the integration of the recommended steps that governments can take will need to be assessed as part of the global review of collective progress of implementation of the GBF, to ensure that a whole-of-society approach3 has indeed been taken. This paper provides some insights on how this integration might take place.

Finally, we note that our previous work shows how citizen monitoring also leads to decision-making at local scales, to rapidly address environmental management challenges. We would, therefore, expect that the involvement of citizens in the monitoring of the GBF indicators would also result in additional actions and improved outcomes for nature over the coming years. This hypothesis can be tested as the reports to the CBD from nations are delivered and through more detailed work together with communities around the world.

Methods

Development of our database for analysis

We coded the agreed indicators of the GBF9 for each of the 23 targets and four goals based on our previously statistically defined four monitoring types20, bearing in mind that the GBF indicators were developed with national data collection in mind but also to promote the involvement of local people in the process through a whole-of-society approach. Ten of the 375 agreed GBF indicators have not been developed as of 25 March 2024 and were therefore excluded from the study.

Coding was undertaken independently by N.D.B. and F.D. and conflicts between assessment results were resolved by consensus through discussion; see details below (Supplementary Data). Using our holistic framework of monitoring approaches, we assessed—for every indicator—if it could be measured: (1) by IP, LC and citizen scientists who set up the monitoring programmes and undertake the whole monitoring process, from design, to data collection, to analysis and finally to use of data for management decisions on their own without any involvement of professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations (‘autonomous local programmes’; our type A programmes20,41); (2) by IP, LC and citizen scientists who collect, process and interpret the data and present findings to indicator initiators or decision-makers based on an original initiative to set up monitoring by them in collaboration with outsiders (‘community-based monitoring programmes’; our type B); (3) by professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations with involvement of IP, LC and citizen scientists as data collectors (‘contributory citizen science programmes’; our types C and D); or (4) by professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations without involving IP, LC and citizen scientists (our type E). The criteria are not mutually exclusive and some indicators received multiple scores. The nomenclature for the monitoring types is modified from ref. 41.

For every indicator, we also assessed the main constraints, if any, to the involvement of IP, LC and citizen scientists as: (1) requires area-based or remote sensing-based data (further details later); (2) requires a national or supranational overview; (3) requires knowledge of administrative, legislative, policy, regulatory or managerial aspects; (4) requires data from museums or herbaria; or (5) difficult to monitor technically or analytically.

The two evaluators considered the methodology of the indicator whenever they were able to obtain methodological information from the Kunming–Montreal GBF indicators website (https://gbf-indicators.org/). For indicators that have no agreed up-to-date methodology, the evaluators based their coding entirely on the indicator title and the scientific and grey literature. When the evaluators disagreed in their coding, they searched the Web of Science and the internet for the methodology of the indicator and of the community-based monitoring and citizen science initiatives; they continued searching until they together considered that there was sufficient knowledge for the final coding. Ultimately consensus was reached between the two evaluators in all situations.

The coding for indicators that require area-based or remote sensing-based data was subsequently cross-checked independently by D.Z., based on the published indicator methodology and associated metadata as of March 2024 available on the Kunming–Montreal GBF indicators website. The cross-checking was aligned with ref. 42 but narrowed to focus on indicators that require use of spatial data.

When protected areas or Ramsar sites are mentioned in the indicator titles, the evaluators decided that this in itself would not mean that the indicator ‘requires knowledge of administrative, legislative, policy, regulatory, or managerial aspects’. When indicators were about ‘the number of countries’ that had something in place, the evaluators decided that calculating the number of countries was not in itself ‘difficult to monitor technically or analytically’.

Examples of IP, LC and citizen science initiatives that can support monitoring the headline indicators of the GBF are presented in Supplementary Table 2, which was prepared in response to comment from a reviewer. We do not present examples for the component and complementary indicators. The quality of the datasets that the examples in Supplementary Table 2 produce (for example, if the datasets had led to decision-making) was not assessed. Documenting examples and assessing the quality of the datasets of the examples could have introduced methodological differences between the present study and the previous study of 12 international environmental agreements.

Measure of our confidence in the coding

We determined for each indicator whether we personally knew of specific or closely related examples of monitoring programmes in which the indicators had been populated with data. We used the proportion of indicators (averaged between the two evaluators) where we knew of examples of monitoring programmes in which the indicators had been populated with data as a measure of our confidence in the coding we had provided.

Validation

For validation, we asked eight experts from across the world to independently complete a random spot test of 10% (35) of the 365 indicators (Supplementary Table 1). We used the following criteria for the selection of experts for the independent assessments: (1) the person must be working (or have worked) with environmental monitoring and management at the local district/village/provincial/subregional level or at the national/international level and (2) the person must not have been co-author of our previous publications on participatory monitoring20,41. We aimed at a balanced representation of experts geographically (Latin America, 3; Asia, 2; Africa, 1; Europe, 1; Oceania, 1). The experts were asked to follow the exact same procedure as N.D.B. and F.D. Four of the experts were women, aged 33, 33, 37 and 58 years and four were men, aged 40, 42, 55 and 70 years. Informed consent was obtained from all eight experts and confidentiality and anonymity were maintained throughout the research process. No compensation was provided and no potential conflicts of interest were identified. We compared the assessments using Kappa statistics43. We used the following categories for interpretation of Kappa: 0, less than chance agreement; 0.01–0.20, slight agreement; 0.21–0.40, fair agreement; 0.41–0.60, moderate agreement; 0.61–0.80, substantial agreement; and 0.81–0.99, almost perfect agreement.

International environmental agreements used for comparison

We compared the proportions of indicators for the GBF suitable for involving citizens in their monitoring with those of the strategic plan for biodiversity 2011–2020 and the associated Aichi biodiversity targets and the indicator frameworks of 11 other entities and agreements that we have assessed with the same approach in the past20. These international environmental entities and agreements are: AEWA, CBMP, CITES, CMS, IOSEA, OECD, Ramsar, SEBI, UNCCD, UNFCCC and WHC. OECD is not an environmental organization but uses environmental indicators to promote policies that enhance global economic and social well-being.

Data organization

We use the structure of the GBF to organize our data: four goals and 23 targets, 36 headline indicators (including 10 listed twice, once for a goal and once for a target), 64 component and 265 complementary indicators. We also assessed our results within the broad grouping of targets used in the GBF: (1) ‘reducing threats to biodiversity’ (targets 1–8) focuses on conservation and restoration and reducing impact drivers, (2) ‘meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing’ (targets 9–13) focuses on sustainable and equitable use of natural resources and maintaining ecosystem services and (3) ‘tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming’ (targets 14–23) describes higher level systemic changes.

Graphical illustration of the overall results

We summarize the results in Fig. 5, where for each group of indicators and agreement, the x axis plots the proportion of indicators that can be measured by professional scientists and governmental statistical organizations with the involvement of citizens as data collectors. This indicates the extent to which the indicators are amenable to being monitored by contributory citizen science programmes. The y axis plots the proportion of indicators that can be measured by citizens, who not only collect data but also process and interpret the data and present the findings to decision-makers. This indicates the extent to which the agreement is amenable to being monitored by community-based monitoring programmes.

Definitions

We defined monitoring as ‘the process of gathering information about state variables at different points in time for the purpose of drawing inferences about changes in state’44. Indicators, then, are ‘a metric that represents that state’45. We defined professional scientists as persons who have ‘academic degrees in the natural or social sciences or the humanities’. We defined citizen science as ‘public participation in scientific research and knowledge production’46. We defined area-based or remote sensing-based data as ‘geospatial data that describes geographic range with specific locations or boundaries, for example protected areas, range of suitable habitat or geospatial data developed from remotely sensed data or satellite images’.

Caveats

One weakness in our approach is that we are relying on expert-based scoring. There was only moderate agreement between our (N.D.B. and F.D.) assessment and the eight independent expert assessments, suggesting that individual interpretation of the indicators has a role in how results are assigned. However, the fact that N.D.B. and F.D. have done this exercise several times and N.D.B. has been involved in the development of the monitoring framework for the GBF means we believe that across 365 indicators assessed, the broad patterns reported are defendable, although figures from individual indicators are subject to uncertainty. The simplicity of the approach taken and the somewhat subjective nature of some of the assessments means that we have presented the results using simple graphics and not undertaken statistical analysis of differences between grouped data.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.