Transforming Biodiversity Science: From Measuring Loss to Enabling Recovery

Biodiversity is fundamental to the living systems that underpin food, water, health, climate resilience, and economic stability, underpinning more than half of global GDP. Yet, evidence from global assessments shows that biodiversity is declining across regions and scales, with losses of 2-6% per decade across a range of biodiversity indicators, and vertebrate populations reduced by an average of 73% since 1970. While these losses are increasingly well documented, far less is understood about recovery and how to measure gains—reflecting both what we measure and how we measure it. Key gaps remain in our ability to detect changes in ecosystem health in response to management, to understand how these changes translate into biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to connect local observations with globally consistent data streams such as satellite-based monitoring. Rapid advancements in data collection, processing, and analysis technologies offer new opportunities to fill these gaps. However, improved measurement alone will not reverse current trends. Recent IPBES assessments have clearly identified structural challenges and have highlighted many of the solutions. Siloed governance, perverse incentives, and short-term decision-making can be addressed through integrated approaches across the biodiversity-climate-food-water-health nexus and through targeting leverage points for systems change. Our biodiversity science needs to embrace this transition from cataloguing losses to enabling recovery and resilience.