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Successful implementation of global targets to reduce nutrient and pesticide pollution requires suitable indicators

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From Nature Ecology & Evolution

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Indicators proposed for nutrient and pesticide pollution in the current text of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are inadequate for tracking progress and informing policy. We highlight a set of more relevant pollution indicators that would strengthen the monitoring framework of the GBF and discuss conditions for their successful implementation.

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Fig. 1: Primary sources of pollution and proposed indicators for nutrient and pesticide pollution for the monitoring framework of the GBF.

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Acknowledgements

The Comment is based on a science brief written by the coauthors on pollution targets in support of the post-2020 GBF negotiations.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business Economics Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

    Niklas Möhring

  2. Centre D’Études Biologiques de Chizé, UMR 7372, CNRS & La Rochelle Université, Villiers-en Bois, France

    Niklas Möhring

  3. Department of Environmental Studies, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    David Kanter

  4. Institute of Soil & Environmental Sciences, UAF Sub-campus Depalpur-Okara, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Tariq Aziz

  5. Institute of Marine Sciences, Federal University of São Paulo (IMar/UNIFESP), Santos, Brazil

    Italo B. Castro

  6. Environmental Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Federico Maggi

  7. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Lena Schulte-Uebbing

  8. Institute of Social Sciences in Agriculture, Department Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

    Verena Seufert

  9. School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

    Fiona H. M. Tang

  10. Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Frostburg, MD, USA

    Xin Zhang

  11. Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, AgroParisTech, Orsay, France

    Paul Leadley

Authors
  1. Niklas Möhring
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  2. David Kanter
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  3. Tariq Aziz
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  4. Italo B. Castro
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  5. Federico Maggi
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  6. Lena Schulte-Uebbing
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  7. Verena Seufert
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  8. Fiona H. M. Tang
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  9. Xin Zhang
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  10. Paul Leadley
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Niklas Möhring, David Kanter or Paul Leadley.

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All authors declare no competing interests.

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Möhring, N., Kanter, D., Aziz, T. et al. Successful implementation of global targets to reduce nutrient and pesticide pollution requires suitable indicators. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 1556–1559 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02120-x

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