Measuring consideration of aquatic ecosystems in national biodiversity conservation planning through text analysis

Broadening understanding and consideration of biodiversity across aquatic systems is critical to ensure their resilience. Globally, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) sets objectives for conservation of biodiversity and sustainable exploitation of biological resources. Nationally, the broad plan for delivery of these three aims is articulated in National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), which contextualize globally agreed goals to local needs. Here, we use text analysis to investigate the focus of 182 national biodiversity plans that cover actions to achieve the CBD 2010–2020 framework, focussing on marine and freshwater ecosystems and their contrast with terrestrial ecosystems. The approach was validated by correlating intervention-related content measured by text analysis with corresponding interventions inferred from manual reading of the NBSAPs. Our analysis reveals variations in focus between terrestrial and aquatic systems that differ across country types and groups (e.g., inland, coast, or island country groupings, and continents), with significant country-level residual effects. Additionally, differential weightings in the focus of plans relating to environmental status, stressors, or interventions are identified. This study demonstrates the utility of text-analysis tools, and how their use could assist better alignment of national biodiversity strategies and NBSAPs to the 2022–2030 ‘Biodiversity Plan’, to achieve more holistic and better-aligned approaches for conserving biodiversity towards the CBD’s 2050 vision.