Foreword:the Ministry of Environment and Marine and Rural Affairs

FOREWORD:MARM

Biodiversity monitoring systems and new targets after 2010

The United Nations has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biological Diversity.This is a unique opportunity to return biodiversity to the centre stage of politics.It coincides with the end of a cycle, marked by the failure to achieve the 2010 Target to stop biodiversity loss on the European Union scale.The EU Commission itself has acknowledged this fact in its interim assessment of the implementation of the EC Biodiversity Action Plan.

Over this whole period - that is,since the 2010 Target was announced until now - there have been important gaps in information and in standardised and comprehensive systems of indicators to assess compliance with the target.However,there are exceptions:for more than a decade,SEO/BirdLife - funded over the last six years by the Ministry of Environment,Rural and Marine Affairs (MARM,by its initials in Spanish) - has championed an initiative in Spain,setting up a monitoring system based on the most common birds,to study their population trends and the characteristics of their ecosystems.

Currently the work of the EU Spanish Presidency is in full swing.Spain supports an ambitious new post-2010 goal for the EU,which includes a long-term vision (2050) in which biodiversity and goods and services provided by ecosystems, are well protected and restored.There is also a medium-term mission (to be accomplished in 2020) to halt biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystem services,by restoring them as far as possible and by increasing the EU contribution to preventing global biodiversity loss. Regardless of the final statement adopted for the new goal post 2010,it is clear that we must all work hard to achieve its compliance.However,there is no doubt that we now possess the invaluable basic knowledge to assess objectively the fulfilment of the new goals.This knowledge is largely the result of bird monitoring,carried out since 1998.In 2010 the MARM is due to complete the implementation of a biodiversity monitoring system in Spain.Here,SEO/BirdLife´s pioneering role is inspiring the monitoring being undertaken now with other groups of fauna and flora (mammals,amphibians,reptiles, freshwater fish,vascular plants and,soon,invertebrates).

This monitoring work is backed up by the instruments established by the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law 42/2007,which will establish indicators of trends in our biodiversity.By continuing this work,we will be able to take on the future evaluation of the challenges that we commit ourselves to in this Year of Biological Didiversity.

José Jiménez García-Herrera

Director General of Natural Environment and Forest Policy Ministry of Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs