Towards Predicting the Biodiversity Impacts of Environmental Change

In November 2022, JNCC and the Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies published a joint statement on Nature Recovery. This set out the need to embed nature recovery in UK decision-making and to deliver impactful policies that incentivise and drive public and private investment in the protection and recovery of the UK’s nature through all our activities. As envisaged in that statement, the global community has now committed to the ambitious Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. In May 2023, JNCC published a new strategy: Together for Nature (jncc.gov.uk/about-jncc/our-strategy ↗); this further set out the need to advise on the design of new policies and actions to progress nature recovery. However, despite a strong evidence base on biodiversity in the UK, we currently lack the technical capability to use this evidence to model the impact of potential environmental, societal and policy trajectories on biodiversity.