Strategic planning, global collaboration needed to tackle intensifying biodiversity crisis

BioDB.com, a non-profit focused on biodiversity data, has partnered with the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel to launch the Nature Conservation Index (NCI). This initiative aims to address the urgent biodiversity crisis driven by rapid and unsustainable development practices.

In response to rapid development and the growing emphasis on conserving biodiversity, BioDB.com, a non-profit focused on biodiversity data, in collaboration with the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel has launched the Nature Conservation Index (NCI).

According to a press statement issued by BioDB.com, the Nature Conservation Index, an innovative tool, offers critical insights into the effectiveness of conservation efforts across 180 countries, helping to guide and enhance global biodiversity initiatives. The NCI uses 25 indicators to evaluate protected area coverage, species at risk, conservation laws, and future trends of each country.

The 25 indicators help the NCI to evaluate a nation’s conversation efforts using four key pillars spanning land management, threats to biodiversity, capacity and governance, and future trends. Comprehensively, these pillars showcase the importance of strategic planning in biodiversity protection and focuses on the need for countries to align their conservation efforts with global sustainability goals.

As per the latest findings of this index, despite constant conservation efforts, multiple nations in Africa, South and Central America and Southeast Asia are engulfed by intensifying biodiversity crisis.

In Africa, a region renowned for its diverse ecosystems, natural habitats are eroding under the pressures of industrial development, leading to deforestation, pollution, and habitat fragmentation. Similarly, Southeast Asia struggles to sustain its extraordinary flora and fauna amid the challenges of industrial expansion and illegal wildlife trade.

Central and South America, guardians of the vast Amazon rainforest, face a parallel crisis, where unsustainable land use and large-scale deforestation are driving significant environmental degradation.

The NCI also comments upon the pressures from burgeoning tourism, habitat fragmentation, and pollution which are hindering environmental recovery. The index also calls strategic planning and international collaboration to address the biodiversity crisis effectively.

“Severely overlooked by mass media and widely ignored on social media, I wondered how I could grab attention: how can I address the urgent issues of biodiversity loss, animal extinction, and climate change and reach the general public and policymakers? The key, I realized, is to simplify the hard scientific data into digestible, bite-sized informational nuggets,” says Assaf Levy, CEO and Founder, BioDB.