ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the development and evolution of urban biodiversity indicators and assessment tools. The role of cities in global biodiversity conservation is gaining salience, and benchmarks to assess progress resulting from the policies and actions of cities are required within diverse global contexts. While there are indicators to evaluate urban biodiversity conservation ranging from buildings and city blocks to wider metropolitan areas, evaluation methods for the linkages between urban and rural areas are largely unexplored and remain under development. Although the indicator-based assessment tends to be implemented by individual city governments, the strategic collaborations of cities with their surrounding rural areas to facilitate regional scale biodiversity protection and management is also needed. Establishment of appropriate benchmarks to assess the urban-rural collaborations for biodiversity management is an emerging task.
