This guidance document is one of a series produced with the support of the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP) as part of its ‘global-national linkages’ component. The ideas and experience reported in this guidance have been developed and tested in capacity building workshops for national government and NGOs agencies from over 35 countries in southeast Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and eastern and southern Africa. The workshops have been organised with regional partners by UNEP-WCMC as part of the GEF-funded BIP. The workshops in Africa are supported by a UNEP project with funding from the UN Development Account.

This document responds to a mandate in the 2010 CBD Decision on Outcome-Orientated Goals and Targets (Decision X/7) to support ‘national and regional efforts to establish or strengthen biodiversity monitoring and reporting systems to enable Parties to set their own targets and assess progress towards biodiversity targets established at national and/or regional level.’

Much of the thinking on biodiversity indicator development presented here was first developed through a GEF project from 2002 to 2005 called ‘Biodiversity Indicators for National Use’ (BINU), working with partners in Kenya, Ukraine, Philippines and Ecuador and at PBL (Netherlands).

The authors wish to express their deep gratitude to the many participants and collaborators in the BIP and BINU projects and workshops for sharing their experience and feedback for this document. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UNEP, European Commission and UN Development Account.