Tracking biodiversity change over time is key to decision-making for its conservation, restoration and sustainable use. However, most long-term monitoring processes are carried out at broad scales, relying heavily on publicly-available records gathered through unsystematic approaches, and remote sensing inputs which are not necessarily useful at local scales.

Given this context, including local actors as allies in biodiversity monitoring, is key to generating robust knowledge. Monitoring through collaborative networks can help to validate products built at broad scales making them more accurate, and connect local efforts and initiatives to increase their empowerment, visibility and impact. These exercises also provide local communities with tools to support their decision making processes regarding biodiversity management and conservation in their territories, as well as bottom-up information to support these processes at subnational level.

Including a biocultural approach to biodiversity monitoring, enables the recognition of diverse knowledge systems and invites them to a horizontal dialogue. The integration of local communities, their knowledge, traditions and culture in biodiversity management and conservation results a key factor for designing relevant strategies, and respectful and concerted actions, which will have direct impact on their sustainability over time.

This symposium aims to share experiences, tools, lessons learned and knowledge in community-based biodiversity monitoring, emphasizing approaches that have  the participation of diverse local actors at their core, as well as those that attempt to evaluate the impact of these processes on decision-making regarding the management and conservation of biodiversity. Although these types of experiences have been spreading throughout the world, having different levels of impact and achievements, there are not enough academic spaces dedicated to sharing, receiving feedback and support, and being able to connect with other teams carrying out these types of projects. 

ATBC 2025 could be the appropriate scenario to make this possible, particularly considering the meeting’s theme related to the synergy between diverse approaches, actors and local knowledge. This will be an opportunity to spark a conversation among conservation researchers and practitioners from several countries around the co-creation of robust monitoring methodologies that involve local communities at the core of generating biodiversity knowledge at ecologically strategic territories.