Submitted by Michela Leonardi on Tue, 29/10/2019 - 11:33
Andrea just published a new paper in PNAS showing that management and governance are vital to ensure the effectiveness of protected areas.
Jonas Geldmann, Andrea Manica, Neil D. Burgess, Lauren Coad, and Andrew Balmford (2019) PNAS 116 (46) 23209-23215
Significance
Protected areas (PAs) are a key strategy for conserving nature and halting the loss of biodiversity. Our results show that while many PAs are effective, the large focus on increasing terrestrial coverage toward 17% of the earth surface has led to many PAs failing to stem human pressure. This is particularly the case for nonforested areas, which have not been assessed in previous analysis. Thus, we show that relying only on studies of remote-sensed forest cover can produce a biased picture of the effectiveness of PAs. Moving forward beyond the current biodiversity targets, there is a need to ensure that quality rather than quantity is better integrated and measured.
Abstract
One-sixth of the global terrestrial surface now falls within protected areas (PAs), making it essential to understand how far they mitigate the increasing pressures on nature which characterize the Anthropocene. In by far the largest analysis of this question to date and not restricted to forested PAs, we compiled data from 12,315 PAs across 152 countries to investigate their ability to reduce human pressure and how this varies with socioeconomic and management circumstances. While many PAs show positive outcomes, strikingly we find that compared with matched unprotected areas, PAs have on average not reduced a compound index of pressure change over the past 15 y. Moreover, in tropical regions average pressure change from cropland conversion has increased inside PAs even more than in matched unprotected areas. However, our results also confirm previous studies restricted to forest PAs, where pressures are increasing, but less than in counterfactual areas. Our results also show that countries with high national-level development scores have experienced lower rates of pressure increase over the past 15 y within their PAs compared with a matched outside area. Our results caution against the rapid establishment of new PAs without simultaneously addressing the conditions needed to enable their success.