Simon Ferrier, Chris Ware, Jenet M Austin, Hedley S. Grantham, Thomas D Harwood, James Watson

Indicators supporting implementation of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are likely to be used not only to monitor progress toward achieving agreed goals and targets, but also to help prioritise specific actions to address shortfalls in this achievement as efficiently as possible. To perform this dual role, adopted indicators must be derived from data of sufficient rigour and spatial resolution to inform decision-making at national and subnational scales. They also need to account for relevant interdependencies between, and within, individual goals and targets. Here we focus on a particularly prominent set of such dependencies – the impact that area-based actions under draft GBF Targets 1, 2 and 3 will have on outcomes for ecosystem area and integrity (including connectivity) under Goal A, and for the flow-on effect that these changes will, in combination, have on the persistence of species diversity. We show how these various linkages can now be addressed across all forests globally, by coupling state-of-the-art mapping of ecosystem integrity with the integrative analytical capability of an advanced habitat-based biodiversity indicator. Results generated for the world’s forest-supporting countries demonstrate that rigorous consideration of the above interdependencies can profoundly alter understanding of the present state of forest biodiversity, and of the spatial distribution of priorities for area-based action, relative