Identifying priorities for each Party

Achieving the outcomes for species stated in Goal A will require progress towards the delivery of all the targets in the Framework, not just Target 4. Targets 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are concerned with reducing pressures, all of which impact species. Target 2 is about restoring degraded ecosystems, which will increasingly benefit the species that these ecosystems once supported, and Target 3 is concerned with the protection and conservation of areas of particular importance for biodiversity (e.g. Key Biodiversity Areas, IUCN 2016), including for species. Target 4 recognises that for some species these responses will be insufficient to prevent their extinction and enable their recovery, and targeted species-specific actions are needed.  Targets 9-13 on “Meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing” will also be important, as will those Targets on “Tools and solutions for implementation and mainstreaming”, particularly those Targets focussed on sectors with a significant impact on species.
For many, if not the majority of, threatened species, assessment of their threats and identification of actions has already been undertaken and is widely available. For these species, accelerated implementation of those plans is now essential, recognising that Target 4 is the only Target in the KMGBF requiring ‘urgent’ action.
However, for many species, such assessments have not yet been undertaken.  Therefore, it will be necessary to understand which actions will make the biggest difference to species extinction rate, extinction risk and abundance in each context (e.g. for each Party). This will allow action to be focused on policies and management that are most likely to be effective in addressing Targets and thus reducing pressures. In some countries these may relate to addressing land-use change, while in others it could be tackling invasive species. For most Parties, actions covering a range of the Targets will be necessary for success. This suggests that first it is necessary to understand which threats are driving extinction risk in each country, to allow the most appropriate interventions to be identified, maximising impact and minimising wasted effort. The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration metric (Mair et al. 2021, 2023, Chaudhury et al. 2022, Irwin et al. 2022) offers such an approach and identifies the main threats driving extinction risk in any spatial unit, showing where those threats are having their impact on threatened species. Second, it is critical that urgent recovery actions are directed towards those species most in need. Bolam et al. (2023) describes a method for identifying those species. A priority action for all Parties now is to use this method to first identify those species in need of urgent actions, then identify which threats most urgently require abatement, and use this information to plan, cost, resource and implement these actions in order to halt extinctions, reduce extinction risk and improve population status.