Governments have committed to conserving ≥17% of terrestrial and ≥10% of marine environments globally, especially “areas of particular importance for biodiversity” through “ecologically representative” Protected Area (PA) systems or other “area‐based conservation measures”, while individual countries have committed to conserve 3–50% of their land area. We estimate that PAs currently cover 14.6% of terrestrial and 2.8% of marine extent, but 59–68% of ecoregions, 77–78% of important sites for biodiversity, and 57% of 25,380 species have inadequate coverage. The existing 19.7 million km2 terrestrial PA network needs only 3.3 million km2 to be added to achieve 17% terrestrial coverage. However, it would require nearly doubling to achieve, cost‐efficiently, coverage targets for all countries, ecoregions, important sites, and species. Poorer countries have the largest relative shortfalls. Such extensive and rapid expansion of formal PAs is unlikely to be achievable. Greater focus is therefore needed on alternative approaches, including community‐ and privately managed sites and other effective area‐based conservation measures.

Current global marine protection targets aim to protect 10À30% of marine habitats within the next 3-5 years. However, these targets were adopted without prior assessment of their achievability. Moreover, ability to monitor progress towards such targets has been constrained by a lack of robust data on marine protected areas. Here we present the results of the first explicitly marine-focused, global assessment of protected areas in relation to global marine protection targets. Approximately 2.35 million km 2 , 0.65% of the world's oceans and 1.6% of the total marine area within Exclusive Economic Zones, are currently protected. Only 0.08% of the world's oceans, and 0.2% of the total marine area under national jurisdiction is no-take. The global distribution of protected areas is both uneven and unrepresentative at multiple scales, and only half of the world's marine protected areas are part of a coherent network. Since 1984 the spatial extent of marine area protected globally has grown at an annual rate of 4.6%, at which even the most modest target is unlikely to be met for at least several decades rather than within the coming decade. These results validate concerns over the relevance and utility of broad conservation targets. However, given the low level of protection for marine ecosystems, a more immediate global concern is the need for a rapid increase in marine protected area coverage. In this case, the process of comparing targets to their expected achievement dates may help to mobilize support for the policy shifts and increased resources needed to improve the current level of marine protection.

T i m H . S p a r k s , S t u a r t H . M . B u t c h a r t , A n d r e w B a l m f o r d , L e o n B e n n u n D a m o n S t a n w e l l -S m i t h , M a t t W a l p o l e , N i c h o l a s R . B a t e s B a s t i a n B o m h a r d , G r a e m e M . B u c h a n a n , A n n a M . C h e n e r y , B e n C o l l e n J o r g e C s i r k e , R o b e r t J . D i a z , N i c h o l a s K . D u l v y , C l a i r e F i t z g e r a l d V a l e r i e K a p o s , P h i l i p p e M a y a u x , M e g a n T i e r n e y , M i c h e l l e W a y c o t t L o u i s a W o o d and R h y s E . G r e e n Abstract The target adopted by world leaders of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 was not met but this stimulated a new suite of biodiversity targets for 2020 adopted by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in October 2010. Indicators will be essential for monitoring progress towards these targets and the CBD will be defining a suite of relevant indicators, building on those developed for the 2010 target. Here we argue that explicitly linked sets of indicators offer a more useful framework than do individual indicators because the former are easier to understand, communicate and interpret to guide policy. A Response-Pressure-State-Benefit framework for structuring and linking indicators facilitates an understanding of the relationships between policy actions, anthropogenic threats, the status of biodiversity and the benefits that people derive from it. Such an approach is appropriate at global, regional, national and local scales but for many systems it is easier to demonstrate causal linkages and use them to aid decision making at national and local scales. We outline examples of linked indicator sets for humid tropical forests and marine fisheries as illustrations of the concept and conclude that much work remains to be done in developing both the indicators and the causal links between them.

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There is an increasing momentum within the marine conservation community to develop representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) covering up to 30% of global marine habitats. However, marine conservation initiatives are perceived as uncoordinated at most levels of planning and decisionmaking. These initiatives also face the challenge of being in conflict with ongoing drives for sustained or increased resource extraction. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop large scale theoretical frameworks that explicitly address conflicting objectives that are embedded in the design and development of a global MPA network. Further, the frameworks must be able to guide the implementation of smaller scale initiatives within this global context. This research examines the applicability of an integrated spatial decision support framework based on geographic information systems (GIS), multicriteria evaluation (MCE) and fuzzy sets to objectively identify priority locations for future marine protection. MCE is a well-established optimisation method used extensively in land use resource allocation and decision support, and which has to date been underutilised in marine planning despite its potential to guide such efforts. The framework presented here was implemented in the Pacific Canadian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) using two conflicting objectives -biodiversity conservation and fisheries profit-maximisation. The results indicate that the GIS-based MCE framework supports the objective identification of priority locations for future marine protection. This is achieved by integrating multi-source spatial data, facilitating the simultaneous combination of multiple objectives, explicitly including stakeholder preferences in the decisions, and providing visualisation capabilities to better understand how Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006 global MPA networks might be developed under conditions of uncertainty and complexity.

Marine conservation lags behind terrestrial in the establishment of protected areas. This was recognized by the Convention on Biological Diversity, whose members, in 2004, agreed to establish "comprehensive, effectively managed, and ecologically representative" systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2012. Halfway toward this target date, we look at the coverage of the world's 5045 MPAs from a biogeographic perspective. Only 4.09% of continental shelf areas are incorporated within MPAs, although coverage rises to 12.1% in a narrow coastal belt. Approximately half of all marine ecoregions have less than 1% MPA coverage across the shelf, but this is highly variable, and (8%) of ecoregions have >30% protection. Protection is greatest in the tropical realms, while temperate realms remain poorly represented. Given that that many sites lack effective management, even these low estimates of coverage are an optimistic measure of the extent of effective marine conservation.

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The adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, along with the 20 Aichi Targets, is a strong political endorsement for integrating biodiversity strategy across the entire United Nations system. Aichi Targets represent specific, time‐bound drivers for governments to safeguard both marine and terrestrial biodiversity.For the marine environment, Aichi Target 11 represents a call to effectively conserve at least 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. The core indicator to measure Aichi Target 11 is the extent of protected area coverage, and therefore it is essential that MPA data used to calculate this metric are robust.The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the authoritative source of data for measuring Aichi Target coverage progress. The WDPA assimilates global protected areas data as officially reported by the UN Member States themselves.Analysis of the WDPA (August 2014) calculated that MPAs now cover approximately 12,300,000 km2 or 3.41% of the world's ocean. Only 0.59% of the global ocean area (2 163 661 km2 within 1124 areas) is protected in no‐take areas.Only gathering and using State-sanctioned information may affect the accuracy of the WDPA MPA data. However, it is essential to first and foremost recognize national sovereignty and the rights of the Member State data providers in order to maintain a comprehensive approach to data gathering while ensuring international support for the resulting coverage figures that are used to measure global environmental targets.Further improvements could be made to the MPA data, for example by refining current MPA attributes and working with Member States and conventions to reduce or remove point data in the system. Moreover, broadening the scope of the WDPA to allow the inclusion of clearly marked non‐State‐sanctioned sites would complement existing official data and facilitate dialogue between Member States and other data providers towards MPA data improvement. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.