Biodiversity Indicators: the accounting point of view

According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, biodiversity is the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems. The key value of biodiversity lies in its role in ensuring the functioning of ecosystems and their ability to provide services to humans and other living organisms that comprise them. For that reason, maintaining a sufficient degree of biodiversity is the key to the continued delivery of essential ecosystem services and the need to ensure the conservation of biological diversity is now widely accepted. In spite of this global sentiment, there is not a national or international convergence towards a framework to report to different stakeholders' groups the performance of organizations like protected areas and national parks, in terms of their biodiversity and the conservation activities they are achieving. After describing the concept of biodiversity, its value and the information needs of the community related to it, the main purpose of the paper is to propose a theoretical and systemic framework for its reporting by public sector organizations established for the protection of the natural capital, by means of some specific indicators deduced mainly by the literature concerning biological sciences. Following the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) guidelines, these indicators, interpreted in terms of KPI (Key Performance Indicators), should lead to an increase in the transparency and in the accountability of Protected Areas. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.