Red list Index is a measure of changing state of global biodiversity, indicating trends in extinction risk for various species groups based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. We care about this because this serves as a marker for governments and conservation organizations to monitor progress towards biodiversity targets. An RLI value of 1.0 indicates a healthy ecosystem, whereas an RLI value of 0 indicates that all species have gone extinct.
Let us take a look into three prominent regions in the pacific
The Melanesia region involves Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon islands and Vanuatu. The average combined biodiversity loss in these regions from the year 1993 - 2024 was 0.082, with Papua New Guinea contributing to maximum loss(RLI = -0.1) in the region and Fiji contributing the least (RLI = -0.05) loss of biodiversity.
The Micronesia region involves Kiribati, Marshall islands, Federal states of micronesia, Nauru and Palau. The average combined biodiversity loss in the micronesia region from the year 1993 - 2024 was 0.136. In the said time period, the highest biodiversity loss across all of the pacific regions (Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia) was seen in Palau (RLI = -0.3)
The polynesia region involves Cook islands, French polynesia, Niue, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu. The average combined biodiversity loss from 1993 - 2024 was 0.041. This region also boasted the lowest biodiversity loss in form of two countries - Cook islands (RLI = -0.03) and Samoa (RLI = -0.03), across all three regions. Only one country saw an increase in RLI across all 16 countries in the pacific and that was Niue (RLI = +0.02)
The fan plots provide a model of how ecosystems will prevail for the coming years in the Pacific region. When we peek into the RLI data for more than three decades, we observe that polynesia region has the least biodiversity loss (Average RLI loss = 0.041) when compared to other two. The contributing factor for this predominantly is that out of the six countries included in this region, two have least biodiversity loss (Cook islands and Samoa) and one actually has a gain in RLI index (Niue). The highest biodiversity loss(Average RLI loss = 0.136) is seen in micronesia.
In accordance with the theme of this year's Pacific dataviz challenge - "Blue pacific 2050". The challenge with design was to get something which resonates well with vision of how the RLI will look marching forward to 2050. That is how Fan plot was chosen to represent the probabilistic models of the RLI indexes in 16 countries across the pacific region.
The choice of colors for the fan plot was made with keeping the pacific region in mind. The colours contain the hue of "Alani - Sunset Orange", "Akala - Pink", "Ahiehie - Sandy Beige", "Oma'oma'o - Lush green", "Polu - Ocean Blue", "Ele'ele - Volcanic Black"
This project was built using D3.js. The source code is available on my github
The data is sourced from the pacific data hub, in particular Blue pacific 2050: Ocean and environment (Thematic area 6)
This is a project made for Pacific dataviz challenge
