Workshop on the World Ocean Assessment

b) Current Trends in Biodiversity Condition The judgement of the experts is that Most biodi- versity, the notional 80% of biodiversity across the SCS, is currently in decline (36 of the 56 parameters assessed in the Most category are in decline), with only a small proportion (four of the 56 parameters) improving in condition. Across all three of the data categories (condition scores of Best10%, Most and Worst10% places/occurrence) 45% of the parameter estimates indicated a decline. Overall, the judgement of the experts at this workshop was that biodiversity of the region is either stable or in decline, with very few parameters showing improving trends (Figure 3).

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The experts considered that the ecosystem health pa- rameters in the Best10% of the region are in Very Good condition. However, for the Most category, representing a notional 80% of the ecosystem health parameters of the region, the condition was graded as Good. The uncertainty bar (derived across all the ecosystem health parameters) represents a level of confidence of 1.6 of a scoring unit, indicating that the experts considered that using this rapid assess- ment process, the status of the ecosystem health parameters were assigned with confidence that fell between High and Medium. d) Current Trends in Ecosystem Health The judgement of the experts is that almost all of ecosystem health parameters across the region are either stable or currently in decline (Figure 6). Figure 5. The estimated current (2007–2012) trend in biodiversity parameters across the SCS region, in each of the Best10%, Most and Worst10% places/occurrence.

The trends in condition for the majority of parameters (56%) were assigned with High confidence, and overall, the trends for 92% of the parameters were assigned with either High or Medium confidence (Figure 4). Figure 3. The estimated current (2007–2012) trend in biodiversity parameters across the SCS region, in each of the Best10%, Most and Worst10% places/occurrence.

The trends in condition for the majority of parameters (72%) were assigned with High confidence, and over- all, the trends for all of the parameters were assigned with either High or Medium confidence (Figure 7). Figure 6. The estimated current (2007-2012) trend in eco- system health parameters across the SCS region, in each of the Best10%, Most and Worst10% places/occurrence.

c) Condition of Ecosystem Health The median score across the SCS of all the scored ecosystem health parameters in Best10%, Most and Worst10% (of places/occurrences/populations) is shown in Figure 5. The confidence bar indicates the dataset average level of confidence (High, Medium or Low) applied by the experts to their individual es- timates of the condition for each parameter. Figure 4. Confidence (High, Medium or Low) assigned by the experts to their assessments of trends in the condition of biodiversity shown in Figure 3.