Stefanie Deinet

Human impacts on the environment are wide-reaching and increasing. As consumption and pressures increase, biodiversity decreases, thus disrupting ecosystems and the goods and services that they provide.

Biodiversity indicators represent a means of evaluating change in the environment and the impact that humans are having on nature. When meaningful and reliable, they can be used to inform policy and to develop effective conservation interventions at the global and national level. The Living Planet Index (LPI) is one such indicator used to track progress towards global biodiversity targets by monitoring the change in the population abundance of vertebrate species from around the world.

In addition to providing a global snapshot of the biodiversity in WWF's biennial Living Planet Report, the underlying data of the LPI can be used to measure trends in different thematic areas (different regions and taxonomic groups, or at the national level), to identify how different threats affect populations, and to provide an insight into how conservation intervention can promote species recoveries.