The world is on track to meet a 2020 target on the expansion of protected areas, but more work is still needed, according to a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
Commenting on the report, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said it was crucial to expand protected areas in a targeted manner, supporting efforts to tackle climate change.
Produced by UNEP's World Conversation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) in partnership with IUCN, the Protected Planet report says 15.4% of terrestrial areas and 3.4% of oceans are protected but further progress is needed to cover and effectively manage areas of importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services.
The report finds that 1.6 million km2 of new protected areas have been designated since 2012. Since 2010, the total additional global coverage equates to 6.1 million km2—an area approaching the size of Australia.
The report is the second in a series tracking progress toward meeting Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which calls for effectively and equitably managed conservation areas covering at least 17% of the world’s terrestrial areas and 10% of marine areas—by 2020.
The report warns that without further concerted global action on appropriate targeting of areas to come under protection, integrated and improved national planning, and assessments of how protected areas are effectively and equitably managed, the overall target will not be met.
Crucial to expand protected areas to support efforts to tackle climate change
“Protected areas not only provide us with a vital ecological safety net but also play a vital economic role through the valuable ecosystem services they provide, from supplying water and timber, to sustaining tourism,” said UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. “As we work toward a comprehensive climate agreement, with the next meeting shortly taking place in Lima, and shape the post-2015 sustainable development agenda, it is crucial to expand protected areas in a targeted manner—thus supporting efforts to tackle climate change, and protecting biodiversity and the ecosystem services that sustain all of us.”
The protected area coverage was calculated using the August 2014 version of the World Database on Protected Areas. The database underwent a major update in 2014 - by August 2014, 124 countries had submitted new data and 15 were in the process of submitting.
Terrestrial protected area coverage has increased by about one million km2 since 2010, 126,000 km2 of which came since 2012. In total, 20.6 million km2 of terrestrial and inland water areas are now covered. To cover 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland waters, 2.2 million additional km2 of protected areas are needed.
Just over six million km2 of marine protected areas have been added since 2010, with 1.5 million km2 of this total coming since 2012. In total, 12 million km2 of the global ocean is now covered.
The report says that while marine areas are lagging terrestrial areas in attaining the target, real progress has been made in areas within coastal waters and national jurisdiction—reaching coverage of 10.9% and 8.4% respectively.
However, only 0.25% of seas beyond national jurisdiction are covered by marine protected areas, demonstrating a gap in conservation efforts and highlighting the urgent need to overcome challenges in establishing such areas where national governance systems do not exist.
To meet the 10% in areas within national jurisdiction, a further 2.2 million km2 of marine areas will be required. In addition, 21.5 million km2 in the high seas need to be protected for the target of 10% to be attained.
Recent increases at sea are mainly due to the establishment of huge areas in waters around Australia, New Caledonia and Britain’s South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. In 2014, New Caledonia designated all of its jurisdictional waters as a marine protected area, encompassing an area of about 1.2 million km2, the largest protected area in the world.
If these areas were removed from the global marine statistics, coverage would be halved to only 1.8% of the global ocean area and 4.4% of jurisdictional waters.
Commenting on lack of progress in other areas, the report says that tlack of sustainable financing is a particular area of concern—even though previous UNEP studies have shown that the overall economic benefits of protected areas greatly exceed the cost of managing them.
The financial investment required to establish and effectively manage an expanded protected area network to cover important sites for all wildlife groups by 2020 was estimated in 2012 to be US$ 76.1 billion per year, the report says.
The report also says that lack of effective management remains one of the largest problems facing the current global protected area system. There is also weak reporting and little available data on equitable management, both of which need to be strengthened to provide meaningful assessments of how equitable protected areas and other kinds of conservation areas are managed.
Click here to read the full report.