Set up the Western Balkans Biodiversity Information Hub to improve knowledge exchange and availability of information

ROADMAP PROGRESS

The 2025 GARI reports that the Western Balkans Biodiversity Information Hub and the Biodiversity Monitoring and Evaluation Framework are two closely linked deliverables under the Greening the Western Balkans project (IUCN, funded by the Austrian Development Agency as part of International Partnerships Austria), both in the preparatory phase during the reporting period. The Hub is conceived as a regional digital platform to improve knowledge exchange, enhance data availability and support evidence-based policy for the protection of nature and biodiversity across the WB6. It will consolidate data from domestic environmental agencies, research institutions and monitoring programmes and interface with the GAWB Observatory Platform being developed by the RCC. Its main role is to improve the capacity of the WB6 to set up indicators, collect and publish biodiversity data, exchange knowledge, improve collaboration on data collection and analysis, and to transfer technology across the region. The WB6 Climate Adaptation Roadmap adds to the Hub’s significance by identifying an integrated monitoring system for climate change impacts on land and biodiversity as a priority need and by recognising the GAWB biodiversity monitoring measure as a key vehicle for building the data repository required for a nexus approach to climate risk assessment and adaptation planning. Until the Hub and the Framework are operational, the region will continue to face structural constraints in demonstrating progress on biodiversity commitments to the European Commission and to the international community, most critically the absence of systematic, comparable and regularly updated biodiversity data at domestic level in most of the WB6. The 2024 GARI additionally noted the development of WB6 Red Lists based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™; the 2025 edition does not revisit this.

Note: Action 57 of the first Green Action Plan (2021–2030) is consolidated in the Revised Action Plan (2025–2030), under Action 40, which advances biodiversity monitoring and information systems across the WB6.

Source: Regional Cooperation Council. Annex to 2024 Report on the Implementation of the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans Action Plan (GARI). Sarajevo: Regional Cooperation Council, 2025. 
Note: Data are compiled from Red Lists of flora and fauna published by environmental authorities of the Western Balkans Six. Coverage and taxonomy vary across the WB6 and by species group, limiting direct regional comparability.