Why European biodiversity reporting is not reliable

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims to end the loss of biodiversity, which is one of the greatest ecological challenges of our time. The lack of success in biodiversity policy implementation is partly related to gaps in biodiversity monitoring. Our overall objective is to contribute to the preparation of the upcoming post 2020 period by a review of biodiversity indicator choices in European CBD reports and hence in national monitoring systems. Negative binary generalized models and poisson generalized linear models prove that through free indicator choice in CBD reporting, countries do not choose biodiversity indicators according to their national geographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Moreover, species and ecosystem diversity indicators were chosen with a disproportionate frequency compared to that of genetic diversity indicators. Consequently, trends derived from national CBD reports and monitoring systems in Europe are not reliable, which should be an alarming signal concerning biodiversity policy implementation. Finally, a flow chart to revise national biodiversity monitoring systems is proposed.