Plants under Pressure 2

This project brings together two core Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) indicators, the Sampled Red List Index (SRLI) for Plants and the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), in order to enhance global biodiversity assessment and establish on-the-ground conservation priorities for plants, and finally to apply these global results to inform national policy in Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

The Natural History Museum (NHM): 

- Undertakes International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List assessments of a much larger sample of plant species, improving the robustness and applicability of the IUCN SRLI for Plants;

- Documents the functional traits of these species and determines their phylogenetic position in order to estimate the Red List status of otherwise Data Deficient plant species;

- Combines state-of-the-art analysis of species’ distributions to produce the most detailed maps to date of global plant diversity patterns;

- Integrates these data with local-scale plant assemblages as part of the PREDICTS project led by the NHM; 

- Projects future scenarios of changing plant diversity under both land-use and climate change at local and much larger scales, within a shared analytical and indicator framework;

- Uses these global results as the context for national level policy setting in LDCs where biodiversity is the richest and at greatest threat.

By bringing together two core IPBES indicators, the innovative framework produced feed directly into the setting of the vital 2020 Aichi Targets.