Biodiversity continual improvement – monitoring, review and adaptation

A biodiversity action plan isn't a destination – it's a journey. Ecosystems are dynamic, scientific understanding advances, stakeholder expectations evolve, business conditions change and your organisation learns what works and what doesn't. ISO 17298 recognises this reality by making continual improvement a core requirement, not an optional extra. This final article explores how organisations can implement, monitor, review and continuously improve their biodiversity approaches to achieve lasting success.

Continual improvement doesn't mean perpetually changing directions or never completing work. It means systematically learning from experience, adapting to changing conditions and progressively enhancing your biodiversity performance over time. Organisations that master this adaptive management approach achieve better outcomes than those that rigidly follow initial plans regardless of results.

Implementation

Before you can improve, you must implement. ISO 17298 requires organisations to actually carry out the actions planned in their biodiversity action plans. This may seem obvious, but many sustainability initiatives fail at implementation despite good planning.

Implementation requires several elements. Control mechanisms ensure actions happen as planned – assigning clear responsibilities, establishing timelines, allocating resources, removing barriers and monitoring execution. Documentation maintains records proving actions occurred as intended. This documentation serves internal management needs and external verification requirements. Outsourced process monitoring ensures that when you rely on suppliers, contractors or partners to implement actions, they're genuinely delivering as expected.

Common implementation challenges include competing priorities that divert resources from biodiversity actions, insufficient budget or staff capacity, lack of technical expertise for specialised ecological work, resistance to change from those whose routines are disrupted andinadequate communication about why actions matter. Address these challenges proactively rather than allowing them to derail implementation.

Monitoring

Monitoring transforms the indicators discussed in Article 9 from concepts into data. The standard requires documenting indicator results at regular intervals appropriate to each indicator's nature and the relevant ecological timescales.

Establish monitoring protocols that specify what will be measured, how it will be measured, when measurements will occur, who is responsible for data collection, what quality assurance procedures ensure data reliability and how data will be documented and stored. Consistent protocols enable comparison over time and across locations.

Invest in monitoring infrastructure appropriate to your needs. This might include environmental sensors for continuous pollution monitoring, sampling equipment for water or soil quality assessment, survey protocols for species monitoring, remote sensing capabilities for landscape-level tracking or data management systems for storing and analysing results.

Build monitoring partnerships when internal capacity is limited. Universities can provide student researchers and ecological expertise. Conservation organisations often have monitoring programs you can contribute to or learn from. Government agencies may conduct regional monitoring that provides context for your site-specific data.

Analysis

Monitoring generates data; analysis generates insight. ISO 17298 requires determining methods for analysing and assessing indicator results, implementing those methods, establishing timing for analysis, assigning responsibility for analysis and deciding whether internal or external verification is appropriate.

Analysis should answer several questions. Are you making progress toward objectives? Are actions delivering expected results? Are timelines realistic? Are resources adequate? Are assumptions proving accurate? Are unexpected outcomes occurring? What external factors are affecting results?

Compare actual performance against targets, baselines and trends. A species population increase of 15% sounds positive, but if the target was 50% increase, you're behind. If the baseline trend was 20% annual decline, reversing to 15% growth represents major success. Context matters for interpretation.

Look for relationships between actions and outcomes. Did habitat restoration lead to predicted species recovery? Did pollution reduction improve downstream ecosystem services? Did supplier engagement reduce supply chain impacts? Understanding causal links helps refine future actions.

Retain documented evidence of analysis results as required by the standard. This documentation supports internal learning, enables performance tracking over time, provides evidence for external reporting and creates organisational memory that survives staff turnover.

Assess effectiveness

Beyond analysing indicator results, conduct broader assessment of your biodiversity action plan's overall effectiveness. Is your approach achieving its intended conservation, restorationand sustainable use objectives? Are you meeting stakeholder expectations? Are you reducing risks and capturing opportunities?

This assessment requires both quantitative analysis of indicators and qualitative evaluation of factors that metrics might miss. Stakeholder feedback often reveals effectiveness dimensions that purely ecological indicators don't capture. Operational staff may identify implementation challenges or improvement opportunities that leadership doesn't see.

Consider whether your action plan's theory of change is proving valid. Did reducing pesticides actually benefit pollinators as expected? Did sustainable sourcing requirements genuinely reduce deforestation? Did habitat restoration create functional ecosystems or just vegetated areas? When theories prove invalid, adjust approaches rather than doubling down on ineffective actions.

Updating

Continual improvement requires updating various elements of your biodiversity approach as circumstances change. ISO 17298 identifies several triggers for updates:

Achievement of results may mean objectives are reached sooner than expected, creating opportunity to set more ambitious targets. Or progress may lag, requiring either intensified effort or recalibrated objectives.

Information from monitoring reveals what's working and what isn't, suggesting where to focus resources and which approaches to adjust or abandon.

Evolution of context and stakeholder expectations means issues that were priorities five years ago may have changed. New biodiversity science, evolving regulations, shifting stakeholder concerns or changing business conditions all warrant review.

Development of organisational activities such as new products, new markets, acquisitions, divestitures or operational changes alter your biodiversity interactions and may require scope or action plan adjustments.

The standard specifies what can be updated:

Scope may expand as capacity grows or contract if business changes. Document and justify scope changes to maintain transparency.

Identification and prioritisation of impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities should be refreshed periodically as understanding improves, conditions change or science advances.

Ambition can be increased but not decreased. Once you've committed to a certain ambition level, backsliding breaks stakeholder trust. You can always be more ambitious; you shouldn't be less.

Objectives should be updated based on progress, lessons learned and changing circumstances. When objectives are achieved, set new ones. When objectives prove unrealistic, adjust them – but ensure adjustments maintain meaningful ambition rather than simply lowering bars to claim success.

Biodiversity action plan updates are most frequent, driven by continual improvement opportunities. These might include speed improvements to achieve objectives faster, quality improvements to enhance outcomes, new actions addressing emerging priorities orelimination of ineffective actions.

The continual improvement cycle

Effective continual improvement follows a systematic cycle. Plan your biodiversity approach based on assessment and stakeholder input. Implement actions as planned. Monitor results using indicators. Analyse data to evaluate effectiveness. Learn what works and what doesn't. Update approaches based on lessons learned. Repeat the cycle with enhanced understanding and improved practices.

This cycle – plan, implement, monitor, analyse, learn, update – mirrors the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle familiar from quality management and environmental management systems. Organisations with ISO 14001 environmental management systems can integrate biodiversity continual improvement into existing improvement processes.

The standard emphasises that action plan revisions should "speed up achievement of an objective or improve its quality, but not lower the ambition." Continual improvement means getting better, not making goals easier to achieve. Progress should ratchet upward over time, with each improvement cycle building on previous achievements.

Documentation requirements

Throughout the continual improvement process, document updates made to your biodiversity approach and action plan, including clear justification for changes. This documentation serves multiple purposes: it creates accountability for maintaining ambition, enables stakeholders to track your evolution, supports learning by capturing why decisions were made and provides audit trail demonstrating genuine improvement versus superficial adjustments.

Building adaptive management capacity

Successful continual improvement requires organisational capabilities. Learning culturetreats setbacks as learning opportunities rather than failures, encourages experimentation and innovation and values evidence over assumptions. Adaptive management skills enable teams to adjust approaches based on results rather than rigidly following plans regardless of effectiveness.

Long-term perspective recognises that biodiversity recovery takes time, maintains commitment despite slow initial progress and stays focused on ultimate outcomes rather than short-term metrics. Stakeholder engagement maintains ongoing dialogue about progress, challenges and adjustments rather than one-time consultation followed by silence.

Resource commitment allocates adequate funding for monitoring and analysis, not just action implementation. Organisations that scrimp on monitoring save money initially but lose the feedback needed for effective management. Budget continual improvement as integral to biodiversity performance, not optional expense.

The path forward

ISO 17298's emphasis on continual improvement reflects a crucial reality: perfect biodiversity management doesn't exist. What exists is the possibility of progressively better biodiversity management through systematic learning and adaptation. Organisations that embrace this iterative process, maintain ambition while allowing tactical flexibility, invest in monitoring and analysis and genuinely learn from experience will achieve increasingly positive biodiversity outcomes over time. This journey from initial assessment through objective-setting, action planning, indicator development, implementation, monitoring, analysis and continual improvement represents a comprehensive approach to integrating biodiversity into business strategy and operations. Organisations that complete this journey don't just reduce their biodiversity impacts – they transform their relationship with nature from extractive to regenerative, from harmful to beneficial and from risky to resilient. That transformation benefits both biodiversity and business, creating value that extends far beyond any single organisation to support thriving ecosystems and prosperous societies.