Diversity 2010

Indicators of trends and of status of biodiversity are essential to provide relevant information for policy and management decisions and to assess the compliance of environmental policies and management schemes with international treaties.

At the 6th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-6) of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN-CBD), the Convention Contracting Parties adopted a 2010 Biodiversity Target "to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth".

Monitoring progress towards the 2010 Biodiversity Target implies a need to assess the change in the rate of biodiversity loss and this requires observations at least at three points in time to confirm changes in a baseline trend as a reliable assessment of whether a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss has been achieved or not.

The DIVERSITY 2010 project aimed at developpimng a service capable to monitor the trends in extent for selected ecosystems on a global scale, starting from existing global land cover maps (IGBP 1992, GLC 2000 and GlobCover 2005).

The results of the projects were meant to support the assessment of the progress being made on achieving the "2010 Biodiversity target" adopted by the UNCBD at its COP-6 and endorsed by the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). The project intended to provide a number of indicators compatible with the CBD indicator framework assessing the global trends in ecosystems extent.