HyeJin Kim, Laetitia Navarro, Patricia Balvanera, Jillian Campbell, Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer, Matthew Child, Simon Ferrier, Gary Geller, Mike Gill, Cornelia Krug, Katie L. Millette, Frank E. Muller-Karger, Henrique M. Pereira

As nations design a framework and a process for implementing the new goals and targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the question on how to report on the successes and failures of policy implementation is becoming more salient. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential role of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), Essential Ecosystem Services Variables (EESV) and their derived indicators in monitoring, planning, and implementing multiscale policy frameworks across spatial scales. We first introduce the EBVs and EESVs and then analyze their role in the UN CBD Global Biodiversity Framework, the Systems of Environmental Economic Accounting, Sustainable Development Goals, and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. We illustrate how the EBVs and EESVs can be used across scales via application cases. We also discuss the use of EBVs and EESVs in scenarios and modelling for strategic policy planning. This paper presents the values of the Essential Variables in implementing biodiversity conservation and sustainable development goals, optimizing the integrative use of scientific, policy, and data frameworks and scalable and repeatable workflows from primary data to indicators.