Biodiversity duty reporting: guidance

Acknowledgements and Summary

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to the project steering group and public bodies for reviewing the draft guidance document and providing comments. We would also like to thank the LBAP officer network for the original template upon which this guidance and the revised template were built.

Front page photo credits:

Puffins - Scottish Natural Heritag
Children hugging tree - Scottish Natural Heritage
Dolphin - Scottish Natural Heritage
Flowers beside road - Lorne Gill at Scottish Natural Heritage
All other photos - pixabay.com

This guidance has been developed by Risk & Policy Analysts ( RPA) Ltd as part of the Scottish Government funded research contract 'Evaluation of the Compliance and Quality of Biodiversity Duty Reports 2015'.

Summary

Public bodies in Scotland must publish a biodiversity duty report every three years.

This guidance document aims to help you produce your organisation's biodiversity duty report.

• It suggests activities that you can undertake and report upon;

• It includes example activities from other public bodies; and

• It makes suggestions on how you might want to present your report.

This guidance includes a template you can use but there is no set format or layout for the biodiversity duty reports.

Public bodies can use whatever format they wish to report upon the activities they have carried out to meet their biodiversity duty.

The ideas and suggestions included in this guidance document are just that - suggestions to help you produce a report that fits the opportunities available to your organisation.

Your biodiversity report must be made publically available, preferably online.

Tell others what you do

One of the most important ways you can make a difference for biodiversity ( i.e. nature) is to tell others what action/s you are taking, no matter how small. We inspire and motivate each other this way.

The following links will help you go straight to the section/s that most interest you.

If you would like:

• to know more about the biodiversity duty and reporting process, see Section 1 Introduction.

• to review the suggested template, see Annex 1 Revised template.

• support with using the template, see Section 2 Support with the template.

• extra help with the reporting process (for example, on report format and style), see Section 3 Additional things to consider.

• ideas for activities to carry out and report upon, see Section 4 Example actions. There are also plenty of examples in the first round of reports. Links to published reports are given in Annex 2 Identified biodiversity duty reports (2012-2014).

• to know where to find further information and resources, go to Section 5 Further information.