Biodiversity duty reporting: guidance
This guidance has been superseded by guidance at https://www.nature.scot/guidance-note-biodiversity-duty-explained.
Annex 1 Revised template
Section 1: Introductory information
a) Give an overview of your organisation's regulatory role.
b) Outline how biodiversity feeds into your organisation's decision-making structure, including any initiatives or groups in which your organisation and its staff, board members, etc. are active.
c) Include examples where staff and/or board members have promoted biodiversity initiatives.
Section 2: Mainstreaming
a) Identify the steps your organisation has taken to incorporate biodiversity measures into other areas of policy, strategies or initiatives.
Section 3: Actions taken to improve biodiversity conservation
a) Identify any actions that your organisation has undertaken on the ground, on your own land or elsewhere as part of a contribution to a wider project and how these benefit biodiversity.
b) Include any partnership initiatives on biodiversity that you have been involved in: what these aimed to do, what actions have happened, what you believe the successes were and any plans for future or follow-up work.
Section 4: Partnership working and biodiversity communications
a) Describe and illustrate your organisation's involvement in partnership working on biodiversity.
b) Describe any biodiversity communication that your organisation has undertaken to help raise awareness of and communicate about biodiversity conservation, including any partners that you worked with on communication and awareness raising activities.
c) Describe any training or learning activities that have been carried out internally or externally relating to biodiversity, for example, CPD seminars or attendance at external events ( SNH sharing good practice or Communicate conferences).
d) Identify any opportunities that your staff are given to take part in practical action such as volunteering, e.g. with John Muir Trust, British trust for Conservation Volunteers, RSPB.
Section 5: Biodiversity highlights and challenges
a) Describe you organisation's main achievements for biodiversity over the reporting period and what you are most proud of (this can include processes, plans, projects, partnerships, events and actions).
b) Looking ahead, what do you think will be the main challenges over the next three years?
Section 6: Monitoring
a) What follow-up actions or monitoring have you undertaken to assess the impacts of the actions you have taken? How have you measured this? If you do not carry out any monitoring activities, please explain why.
b) Does your monitoring show any significant trends of highlight any areas of concern?
c) Have you added your data to the National Biodiversity Network Gateway ( NBN) or Biodiversity Action Reporting System ( BARS)?
Section 7: Contribution to targets
Use the following tables to indicate the biodiversity targets to which your organisation has contributed. You may wish to insert additional targets from the 2020 challenge for Scotland's biodiversity (the Biodiversity Strategy), the Six Big Steps for Nature or the Aichi Targets.
| Targets/key steps from Chapter 1 (Healthy ecosystems) of the "2020 Challenge for Scotland's Biodiversity" |
Contribution to key step? |
Justification |
|---|---|---|
| (1.1) Encourage and support ecosystem restoration and management, especially in catchments that have experienced the greatest degradation |
[tick if yes] |
[include project title or reference for relevant activity] |
| (1.2) Use assessments of ecosystem health at a catchment level to determine what needs to be done |
||
| (1.3) Government and public bodies, including SNH, SEPA and FCS, will work together towards a shared agenda for action to restore ecosystem health at a catchment-scale across Scotland |
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| (1.4) Establish plans and decisions about land use based on an understanding of ecosystems. Take full account of land use impacts on the ecosystems services that underpin social, economic and environmental health |
||
| Targets/key steps from Chapter 3 ( Biodiversity, health and quality of life) of the "2020 Challenge for Scotland's Biodiversity" |
Contribution to key step? |
Justification |
| (3.1) Provide opportunities for everyone to experience and enjoy nature regularly, with a particular focus on disadvantaged groups |
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| (3.2) Support local authorities and communities to improve local environments and enhance biodiversity using green space and green networks, allowing nature to flourish and so enhancing the quality of life for people who live there |
||
| (3.3) Build on good practice being developed by the National Health Service ( NHS) and others to help encourage greenspace, green exercise and social prescribing initiatives that will improve health and wellbeing through connecting people with nature |
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| (3.4) Increase access to nature within and close to schools, and support teachers in developing the role of outdoor learning across the Curriculum for Excellence |
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| (3.5) Encourage public organisations and businesses to review their responsibilities and action for biodiversity, and recognise that increasing their positive contribution to nature and landscapes can help meet their corporate priorities and performance |
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| Targets/key steps from Chapter 4 ( Wildlife, habitats and protected places) of the "2020 Challenge for Scotland's Biodiversity" |
Contribution to key step? |
Justification |
| (4.1) Ensure that the management of protected places for nature also provides wider public benefits |
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| (4.3) Integrate protected areas policy with action for wider habitats to combat fragmentation and restore key habitats |
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| (4.5) Involve many more people than at present in this work and improve understanding of the poorly known elements of nature |
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| Targets/key steps from Chapter 5 ( Land and freshwater management) of the "2020 Challenge for Scotland's Biodiversity" |
Contribution to key step? |
Justification |
| (5.1) Promote an ecosystem approach to land management that fosters sustainable use of natural resources and puts biodiversity at the heart of land-use planning and decision-making |
||
| (5.2) Ensure that measures taken forward under the Common Agricultural Policy encourage land managers to develop and retain the diversity of wildlife habitats and landscape features |
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| (5.3) Support 'High Nature Value' farming and forestry |
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| (5.4) Put in place the management necessary to bring Scotland's protected areas into favourable condition and improve the ecological status of water bodies |
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| (5.5) Ensure that biodiversity and ecosystem objectives are fully integrated into flood risk management plans, and restore wetland habitats and woodlands to provide sustainable flood management |
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| (5.6) Restore and extend natural habitats as a means of building reserves of carbon and to help mitigate climate change |
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| (5.7) Provide clear advice to land and water managers on best practice |
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| Targets/key steps from Chapter 6 ( Marine and coastal) of the "2020 Challenge for Scotland's Biodiversity" |
Contribution to key step? |
Justification |
| (6.4) Achieve good environmental status for Scottish seas |
Note: this revised template has been developed from the original version produced by the LBAP officer network.
Contact
Email: Land Use and Biodiversity Team, biodiversity@gov.scot
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