Areas of importance for biodiversity: what are we missing?

10/10/2025

10:30 - 11:10

Learning Zone Pavilion: Publications Hub , Onsite

Forum

Scaling Up Resilient Conservation Action Transitioning to Nature-Positive Economies and Societies

Why attend

A new paper published in Conservation Biology shows that we are missing about half our Key Biodiversity Areas in current national assessments. It highlights the urgent need to update KBA networks in all countries. This session will present results where 11 countries have done this and the results obtained.

Session Description

Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are globally significant sites for biodiversity. They contain a significant amount of the global population of a species, global extent of an ecosystem or site of outstanding ecological integrity. KBAs are being used by governments to report on their MEA targets, and to plan where to focus conservation action, business to minimise impacts on biodiversity and donors to guide where to invest. However, most countries have not assessed their KBAs comprehensively. We show that for the first 11 countries to do this there was a 70% increase in the numbers and 164% increase in total area of KBAs on average. Effectively it shows we may be missing about half the KBAs that exist in a country and highlights the importance of updating and re-assessing KBA networks to better implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

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