Focal Area: Status and trends of the components of biodiversity

Headline Indictor: Coverage of protected areas

Key Indicator Partner:      

Data Available: Global, regional and national time series, 1872 onwards

Development Status: Ready for global, regional and national use 

The protected area coverage indicator helps to track progress in the establishment of a comprehensive protected area network. Protected areas can provide multiple benefits for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. They are widely recognized as a major tool for the conservation of species and ecosystems. The biodiversity they protect provides a range of goods and services essential to human wellbeing. They also help to safeguard natural resources and areas of cultural importance that local communities and indigenous peoples depend on.

In recognition of the importance of protected areas for the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) 2010 target to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of loss of biodiversity, the CBD’s Programme of Work on Protected Areas aims to establish a comprehensive, ecologically representative and effectively managed network of terrestrial protected areas by 2010 and of marine protected areas by 2012. Increasing the coverage of protected areas can contribute to achieving the 2010 target. This indicator measures increases in protected area coverage.

The protected area coverage indicator is calculated using all the nationally designated protected areas recorded in the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) whose extent is known. The WDPA is the most comprehensive global spatial dataset on marine and terrestrial protected areas available. The data in the WDPA is obtained from national and regional authorities as well as from non-governmental organisations.

A GIS analysis is used to calculate terrestrial and marine protection. For this a global protected area layer is created by buffering the points recorded in the WDPA and combining them with the polygons recorded in the WDPA. This layer is overlaid with country boundaries, coastlines and/or buffered coastlines to obtain the absolute and relative coverage of protected areas at national, regional and global scales. Time series are created by dissolving the global protected area layer by the known year of establishment of protected areas recorded in the WDPA.

The indicator can be used to assess the status of protection, or trends in protection over time. It has been widely applied at various scales to measure policy response to biodiversity loss. The proportion of land and sea area covered by protected areas is also one of the indicators used to measure progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goal 7 on ensuring environmental sustainability.

This indicator can be separately expressed for marine and terrestrial areas, at national, regional and global scales. National protected area coverage should ideally be assessed from country-specific data sets but can potentially be disaggregated from global or regional assessments, depending on data coverage and quality.

Growth in nationally designated protected areas from 1872 to 2008 

Graph excludes protected areas with unknown year of establishment

Source: UNEP-WCMC 2009

The protected area coverage indicator measures policy response to biodiversity loss. An increase in protected area coverage indicates increased efforts by governments and civil society to protect land and sea areas with a view to achieve the long-term conservation of biodiversity with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. The CBD’s 2010 target is to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of loss of biodiversity. Increasing the coverage of protected areas can contribute to achieving the 2010 target. This indicator is complemented by other protected area indicators that measure how well the planet’s biodiversity is covered by protected areas, and how well protected areas are managed.

‘The global number and extent of nationally designated protected areas has increased dramatically over the past century. By 2008, there were over 120,000 protected areas covering a total of about 21 million square kilometres of land and sea, an area more than twice the size of Canada. While the terrestrial protected areas listed in the World Database on Protected Areas cover 12.2% of the Earth’s land area, marine protected areas currently cover 5.9% of the Earth’s territorial seas and only 0.5% of the extraterritorial seas. Among nations there is a great deal of variation in protection: only 45% of the 236 countries and territories assessed had more than 10% of their terrestrial area protected, and only 14% had more than 10% of their marine area protected.’

Protected area coverage is not only a global indicator but can also be calculated for regions and nations provided that there are sufficient data available. Coverage of protected areas is for example used by the European Environment Agency as an indicator to track progress towards the European 2010 biodiversity target in European countries.

The 2010 BIP has published guidance for national and regional use of the protected area coverage indicator. This guidance is available on the 2010 BIP webpage for this indicator. For more information about national and regional use of the protected area coverage indicator, contact Bastian Bomhard at UNEP-WCMC (bastian.bomhard@unep-wcmc.org)

The data and methodology used to calculate this indicator will continue to evolve. Improvements in data coverage and quality in the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), and a recent shift from statistical to GIS analysis have resulted in improved indicator quality. It is planned to automate the analysis of the indicator to the extent possible and to make available tools that allow users to calculate protected area coverage for any area of interest. Gaps and/or time lags in reporting protected area data to the WDPA need to be addressed in order to reduce differences in globally and regionally/nationally derived indicator values.