The purpose of this document is to review recent information from the scientific literature on the status, trends, and projections of global biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to describe how this can be used to inform how the 2050 Vision might be achieved. The review is not intended to comprehensively cover all biodiversity projection and scenario studies, but rather to provide illustrative examples of their relevance for achieving the 2050 Vision. Our starting point is the fourth edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO4) (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2014). We then build upon this by identifying assessments and projections of the state of biodiversity in the scientific literature since GBO-4 was published in 2014. We compare projections for biodiversity and ecosystem services under ‘business as usual’ scenarios to projections under alternative scenarios, identify gaps and uncertainties, and finish by examining the relevance of recent projections and scenarios for achieving the 2050 Vision.