Biodiversity is enormously diverse, unevenly observed, and constantly in motion across space and time. This makes it far harder to monitor than many other parts of the environment. As a result, managing biodiversity often depends on information that is incomplete, delayed or unevenly distributed. At the very moment when rapid change makes timely knowledge more valuable, the systems for collecting, identifying, publishing and using biodiversity data often struggle to keep pace.

To address this, six EU-funded Horizon projects – B-Cubed, BMD, OneSTOP, MAMBO, GUARDEN, and AURORA – have developed a new policy brief suggesting five policy directions that can help mitigate the lag from biodiversity observation to information. 

• Reduce institutional bottlenecks: support data pipelines that move smoothly from field collection to open publication, with shared standards and automation where possible;

• Rethink incentives: reward data publication and timely sharing as legitimate scientific outputs; 

• Strengthen identification capacity: invest in AI-assisted identification, reference collections and expert networks to accelerate taxonomic workflows;

• Encourage near-real-time data use: develop platforms that deliver provisional but usable data for decision-making, with clear metadata on taxonomic uncertainty.

• Embed feedback loops: Ensure that once information is used, results and corrections flow back to improve data quality over time.

The policy brief also provides examples of how the six EU projects aim to address the lag from observation to information.  

B-Cubed is built rapid, repeatable workflows that turn species occurrence data into policy-ready indicators. The project developed standardised biodiversity data cubes and automated open workflows that can be rerun whenever new data arrive. By organising species occurrence records into harmonised spatial and temporal grids, and linking them with environmental and contextual data, B-Cubed supports indicators that are transparent, reproducible and easier to compare across countries and reporting cycles. Consequently, the project helps bridge the gap between the needs of policy-makers and biodiversity monitoring. 

Find out more about the issue and the future directions of each project in the policy brief available on Zenodo and our website.