National Report Cards
The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s Half-Earth Project aims to identify and protect sufficient habitat to safeguard global biodiversity. But where can people go to learn which unprotected areas could best contribute to the Half-Earth goal of conserving global biodiversity? Visualizing scientific advances in understanding the health and habitats of species makes biodiversity tangible for policymakers at global, national, and local levels, so we’ve created Species Protection Index National Report Cards (NRCs) to summarize various aspects of conservation efforts at the national level. The Species Protection Index (SPI) is an indicator of global biodiversity change that is featured in the NRCs. The report cards can be used to explore different national indicators measuring conservation needs and progress and to understand the unique challenges faced by each country. NRCs focus on a single country and can be viewed on the Half-Earth Project Map or as individual report cards below.
“SPI National Report Cards are reimagining the way species conservation is done. Finding opportunities where we can partner with other global efforts will improve our ability to protect species now and combat climate change which threatens the quality of habitat.”
At this time, the national SPI values are only calculated for vertebrate species, because high-quality, high-resolution data is only available for approximately 40,000 such species. NRCs on the Half-Earth Project Map offer a full range of interactive features to explore, including layers of priority, richness, and rarity, trends, tools for comparing national SPIs, and custom analysis tools. Learn more about the features of NRCs on the Half-Earth Project Map.
Species are the key biological drivers of the diverse ecological functions that sustain our planet. Representing this ecological diversity within systems of protected and conserved areas is therefore central to the overarching ambition of the Global Biodiversity Framework and the outcome sought by its Target 3 to protect 30% of land, waters, and sea.
The Species Protection Report addresses the state of species protection in 2024. It reports on the progress of regions and countries in the adequate representation of species within networks of protected and conserved areas. These trends are measured through the Species Protection Index (SPI), the only formally adopted indicator for Target 3 that directly and quantitatively addresses the importance protected areas play for conserving species. For any region, and based on tens of thousands of detailed spatial species data, the index measures how well existing conservation areas include areas of biodiversity importance and contribute to species survival and ecological representation.
The Species Protection Report is a collaborative effort of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s Half-Earth Project, the Map of Life (MOL), the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), and Esri.
