- New IUCN Framework Puts Ecological Integrity at Heart of Biodiversity Action
The world has mastered announcing protected areas, restoration pledges and biodiversity targets. A conservation report argues that these commitments may still fail nature if governments measure success by boundaries and statistics rather than by whether ecosystems remain alive, connected and functional.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is calling for ecological integrity to become a central measure of global biodiversity conservation, climate action and ecosystem restoration.
Released at the opening of the UN Biodiversity Conference, CBD CoP17, in Yerevan, Armenia, the report provides guidance for governments, conservation organisations and other stakeholders seeking to incorporate ecosystem health into national biodiversity strategies and climate commitments.
Its intervention comes as governments conduct the first global review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, including the commitment to conserve 30 per cent of the world’s land and seas by 2030.
The timing matters. With only a few years remaining before 2030, political pressure may encourage countries to prioritise targets that are easy to count. Declaring additional hectares protected can produce an impressive statistic. Determining whether wildlife populations, rivers, forests and ecological processes are actually recovering is far more demanding.
Ecological integrity measures the extent to which an ecosystem retains its native species, natural structure, ecological functions and processes. It therefore asks a deeper question than whether land or water falls within a legally recognised conservation boundary.
John G. Robinson, a Wildlife Conservation Society scientist and co-chair of the IUCN Task Force on Ecological Integrity, said the world’s conservation ambitions could not be assessed solely by counting protected areas, safeguarded species or the amount of land and water placed under conservation.
“The real test is whether natural ecosystems — forests, grasslands, freshwater systems, and oceans — are maintaining or recovering the ecological integrity needed to sustain life,” he said.
That shift from administrative coverage to ecological outcomes could transform the way governments report conservation progress. A forest may remain visible from a satellite while losing the animals that disperse seeds, the predators that regulate populations or the water systems that sustain surrounding communities.
Madhu Rao, chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and WCS director of protected and conserved areas, said ecological integrity could show whether conservation areas were working for both nature and dependent communities.
“It should be a crucial measure of success for 30×30,” she said.
Its practical importance lies in offering governments a framework for moving from promises towards measurable and verifiable conservation results. That could influence how projects are selected, how protected areas are managed and how public and donor funding is allocated.
If ecological integrity becomes a financing criterion, conservation organisations would need to demonstrate that their interventions preserve or restore ecosystem functions. Donors could compare outcomes rather than relying on spending totals, activity reports or the number of hectares nominally covered.
Joe Walston, WCS executive vice-president of global conservation, argued that a protected area meant little if its wildlife had disappeared, rivers were disconnected or forests no longer functioned.
A government cannot credibly claim to protect biodiversity if one agency designates a reserve while another approves roads, mining or poorly planned development that fragments the same ecosystem. Integrity requires policy coherence across the state.
It also links biodiversity and climate action. Intact forests, wetlands, grasslands and marine systems store carbon while helping communities withstand floods, droughts, heat and changing rainfall. Protecting them can therefore deliver both mitigation and adaptation benefits.
However, measuring integrity will not be simple. Ecosystems differ, change over time and respond to natural disturbances. A healthy savannah should not be judged by the same indicators as a tropical forest, freshwater system or coral reef.
The report recognises that ecosystems are dynamic and that their integrity can nevertheless be measured. Governments will need credible baselines, locally appropriate indicators and long-term monitoring capable of distinguishing natural change from human-driven degradation.
WCS emphasised the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities whose longstanding stewardship helps maintain high-integrity ecosystems. Their participation is not simply a matter of consultation. It can improve ecological knowledge, enforcement and the legitimacy of conservation decisions.
Conservation policies that displace communities or ignore customary rights may produce conflict while weakening the very stewardship that preserved an ecosystem. Governments must therefore recognise rights, share benefits and involve local people in defining success.
The integrity approach should also change restoration policy. Planting trees is not equivalent to restoring a forest. A plantation containing one commercially valuable species may increase tree cover without recreating native biodiversity, habitat complexity or natural water cycles.
Likewise, restoring wetlands requires more than vegetation if water flows remain blocked. Successful restoration must recover relationships and processes, not merely improve appearance.
The report presents an accountability challenge. Once governments agree that ecological function matters, they can no longer rely on announcements that are disconnected from conditions on the ground.
National biodiversity strategies should identify priority high-integrity ecosystems, establish measurable baselines and disclose whether those systems are stable, declining or recovering. Protected-area managers should be evaluated against ecological outcomes, while climate finance should favour interventions that preserve multiple natural functions.
The same discipline should apply to private conservation claims. Companies purchasing offsets or funding restoration must demonstrate that their projects create durable ecological gains rather than temporary or narrowly defined improvements.
The IUCN report does not diminish the importance of protecting more land and water. Instead, it clarifies the purpose of protection: maintaining the living systems that support wildlife, climate stability, economies and human well-being.
The world could technically reach its 30×30 coverage target and still preside over continuing ecological decline. That would represent statistical achievement but biological failure.
Putting ecological integrity at the centre of policy offers a harder standard, because functioning ecosystems cannot be manufactured through declarations. But it also provides a more honest measure of whether conservation investments are delivering enduring results.
The decisive question for CoP17 is therefore not simply how much nature the world has promised to protect. It is whether the places already counted as conserved still possess the species, connections and natural processes necessary to sustain life.
