Review your plans and promote the results

The biodiversity duty also requires that you report on your biodiversity actions. This can be part of your existing reporting or as a stand alone document.

This will also help you to check that your activities are delivering the positive results for biodiversity that you planned.

This means setting up clear arrangements from the outset for monitoring and reporting results, then feeding these results back into future plans and activities.

Review progress

As part of your biodiversity planning you will have created specific targets and actions, and more general objectives.

Use your plan and your overall biodiversity vision as the basis for monitoring your progress and recognising achievements in biodiversity conservation.

Create a report

A formal progress report may be helpful for you, your management team and all those involved in biodiversity in your organisation. Your reporting will help to show:

• That you are delivering the duty
• Evidence of a socially responsible attitude to the way you are conducting your business
• The contribution you are making towards sustainable development and "quality of life" issues
• The contribution you are making towards Scottish government targets.

The key element in your report will be to show progress against your planning targets.

You might like to use the biodiversity reporting template to help you format how and what you report.

Communicate

Use the review and reporting process to identify successes and celebrate these. By talking about successes you will raise awareness of biodiversity issues in your organisation and encourage others to get involved.

Internally you can communicate results through a formal report, newsletter, intranet or presentation.

You may also want to consider press and PR opportunities as success in this area could have a positive impact of the reputation of your organisation.

Next steps

Use feedback from the review process to improve your planning and results for biodiversity so that you see constant improvement.