Cristian Cruz Rodriguez

One of the recent accomplishments of the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was to establish the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework. This framework encourages countries towards a shared goal of preserving biodiversity. Assessing countries’ effectiveness using indicators like the species habitat index (SHI), as discussed in the previous post, is essential for understanding the state of ecosystems and for connecting these results to such international agreements.

Since 1990, research integrating people and nature has increased, with 97% of publications in the last two decades, reflecting the growing interest in understanding this relationship. With this growing knowledge and the need to understand how policy actions are working to integrate nature conservation and people, it is imperative to identify relationships between public policies and socioecological studies.

In our most recent paper, we addressed this question.

We conducted a systematic literature review to examine how policymakers use scientific knowledge within a socio-ecological context. We found that while some articles mention institutional needs, there is a lack of information on how coordination efforts between institutions operate and their actual impact on biodiversity and human well-being.

Additionally, studies involving decision-making often do not incorporate biological data beyond changes in coverage and lack inclusion of other hierarchical levels of biodiversity, such as genetics. This results in a limited understanding over time of how fluctuations in natural coverage influence the persistence of species inhabiting those areas and highlights new challenges for science to connect more effectively with policy.

We also found that embedding stakeholder participation in indicator development is equally important, particularly through the inclusion of local and Indigenous knowledge systems in participatory settings that recognize their expertise.

Addressing these gaps would transform socio-ecological indicators from academic exercises into practical tools that effectively inform biodiversity policy and decision-making. Building on this initial research, a future review aiming to better understand the conditions under which a socio-ecological indicator approach genuinely integrates decision-making should consider expanding the evidence base beyond what is typically reported in academic articles.