What Becomes Counted: Understanding the Construction of the GBF Monitoring Architecture to Strengthen a Just and Effective Implementation

Ensuring just and effective implementation of the GBF requires understanding not only the agreed targets and indicators, but also how the monitoring architecture that operationalises them has taken shape. This work presents an empirically grounded account of how this architecture was assembled between 2023 and 2025 and identifies key attention points for experts and practitioners engaged in biodiversity governance.

The analysis combines a four week multi-sited ethnography at COP16 (Cali, 2024; Rome, 2025), with virtual ethnography from 35 online gatherings on biodiversity metrics, finance, and reporting (e.g. UNEP-FI, TNFD, SBTN). This is complemented by 22 semi-structured interviews with negotiators, multilateral experts, natural and social scientists, Indigenous representatives, NGOs and financial actors, as well as document analysis of CBD texts, indicator guidance, SEEA and TNFD materials, national biodiversity strategies, and reports from major organisations developing biodiversity metrics. Analytically, the study focuses on moments where categories, standards and methodological choices were negotiated or recalibrated, revealing how the monitoring system is stabilised in practice.

Findings show that although the Monitoring Framework indicators are agreed, their implementation depends on broader decisions: which methodologies become defaults, which data sources are prioritised, how information is validated, and which expert communities shape technical guidance. These choices tend to favour globally standardised biophysical metrics, making it difficult for relational, cultural or territorial dimensions - central to many Indigenous Peoples, local communities and their epistemic allies - to be integrated in practice. The frequently invoked idea of a “common language” supports coordination but also narrows the range of perspectives considered legitimate, creating an impression of consensus that masks important differences in how nature is understood and governed.

This diagnosis allows us to propose areas of attention: making fuller use of existing flexibilities in reporting to incorporate social, governance and IPLC-relevant information; designing guidance, capacity-building and, validation processes that examine underlying methodological assumptions and support plurality; and fostering interdisciplinary and cross-actor spaces where experts and diverse knowledge holders can review how monitoring tools shape what becomes visible and actionable. These steps can enhance justice, credibility and effectiveness within the GBF’s existing monitoring architecture.