The Green List of Species: towards a Standard for measuring species recovery
The Green List of Species: towards a Standard for measuring species recovery
The world lacks a standardized framework for measuring species recovery comparable to the way we do extinction risk (the world-renowned IUCN Red List of Threatened Species). The current project will ensure the emerging IUCN Green List of Species is fit for purpose to help end-users set (and measure) ambitious recovery targets and attribute impact of conservation actions.
Project Aims
- Advance the development of, and test the robustness of, a standardised way to measure species recovery and conservation impact (the Green List of Species)
- Use the developing Green List framework to highlight the conservation impact of BirdLife and FFI, as well as familiarise these key partners with the Green List concepts and process.
Key Activities
- In-depth testing of the Green List of Species framework by FFI and BirdLife, applying it to species across a diverse set of taxonomic groups, with varying life histories and ecological traits, threats, and levels of knowledge and uncertainty
- An analysis of the effect and impact of temporal and spatial scale on the framework (i.e., the degree to which flexibility about these elements of the Green List method impacts the Green List score)
- End-user consultations and policy engagements to facilitate broader uptake of the Green List approach in the wider conservation community and policy arena
Conservation Impact
This work is critical to the successful launch of the IUCN Green List of Species, a tool which will:
- Increase the effectiveness of conservation actions by catalysing innovative and collaborative interdisciplinary work that delivers sustainable solutions for natural resource management: The Green List will introduce a standardized method to evaluate the impact of conservation actions, drawing on knowledge from disciplines beyond traditional conservation biology.
- Foster and champion a comprehensive understanding of the values of biological diversity in order to address the urgent need for sustainable biodiversity conservation: The Green List will provide the first global metric for species recovery, a quality of species conservation which until now has been poorly understood.
- Engage with and provide analysis to inform decision-making by government, industry and civil society in local, national and international contexts: The Green List will be an extension of the Red List, providing new information to the global network of end-users who rely on the Red List to inform decision-making.
Outputs
- Draft Green List of Species assessments for a suite of taxonomic groups with the intention of these eventually being published on the IUCN Red List website;
- Presentation of results at the World Conservation Congress in Marseilles, France, in June 2020;
- A scientific paper summarizing the results of analyses to understand the impact of spatial scale on the Green List of Species methodology;
- An end-user report summarizing findings from the survey of potential end-users of the Green List standard; and
- A series of side-events and input to information documents for upcoming policy events.
Project Overview
Type: Funded Projects
Theme: Indicators, monitoring and effectiveness
Project code: CCI-05-19-008
Start date: August 1, 2019
Status: Complete