Robert M McElderry , Camille Fournier de Lauriere , Charbel El Khoury, Priyanka Chaudhary, Shivakumara Manu, Felix Specker, Ian Brettell, Johan van den Hoogen , Daniel Maynard, Carolina Bello Lozano, Lalasia Bialic-Murphy, Camille S Delavaux, Daisy H Dent, Thomas Elliott, Laura G van Galen, Thomas Lauber, Andrea Paz Velez, Gabriel Smith, Leland K Werden, Constantin M Zohner, Thomas W Crowther

Quantifying biodiversity across the globe is critical for transparent reporting and assessment under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Understanding the complexity of biodiversity requires consideration of the variation of life across genes, species, and ecosystems. Achieving this in a standardized way remains a key challenge for creating an equitable nature positive future. Here, we present the Sustainable Ecology and Economic Development (SEED) framework, which assesses the dimensions that structure biodiversity patterns worldwide (genetics, species, and ecosystems) across plants, animals, and microbial taxa, and consolidates this into a single measure of biocomplexity at every location, relative to a ‘reference’ ecosystem with minimal human disturbance. We describe the SEED methodology and highlight its features, which include seven novel measures of biodiversity intactness that are integrated into the SEED biocomplexity index. SEED will continuously integrate new datasets and maps to provide up-to-date estimates of local biocomplexity across the planet, providing a tool for decision makers to assess and improve the global state of nature.