Dynamics in the global protected‐area estate since 2004

Abstract

Nations of the world have committed to a number of goals and targets to address global environmental challenges. Protected areas have for centuries been a key strategy in conservation and play a major role in addressing current challenges. The most important tool used to track progress on protected-area commitments is the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). Periodic assessments of the world's protected-area estate show steady growth over the last 2 decades. However, the current method, which uses the latest version of the WDPA, does not show the true dynamic nature of protected areas over time and does not provide information on sites removed from the WDPA. In reality, this method can only show growth or remain stable. We used GIS tools in an approach to assess protected-area change over time based on 12 temporally distinct versions of the WDPA that quantify area added and removed from the WDPA annually from 2004 to 2016. Both the narrative of continual growth of protected area and the counter-narrative of protected area removal were overly simplistic. The former because growth was almost entirely in the marine realm and the latter because some areas removed were reprotected in later years. On average 2.5 million km was added to the WDPA annually and 1.1 million km was removed. Reasons for the inclusion and removal of protected areas in the WDPA database were in part due to data-quality issues but also to on-the-ground changes. To meet the 17% protected-area component of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 by 2020, which stood at 14.7% in 2016, either the rate of protected-area removal must decrease or the rate of protected-area designation and addition to the WDPA must increase.

Perspectives on area‐based conservation and its meaning for future biodiversity policy

“…Although there is evidence that percent targets increased national conservation efforts (Bacon et al 2019;Díaz et al 2019;Green et al 2019), it is widely agreed that better links are needed between quantitative and qualitative targets, including measures of conservation outcomes. This requires looking beyond percent targets and conventional PAs and focusing on ecological representation, well-connected, and other area-based measures for biodiversity, including under the governance of indigenous peoples and local communities, and ecosystem services (Butchart et al 2015;Chauvenet & Barnes 2016;Lewis et al 2017). Clear, comparable performance metrics for measuring effectiveness of PAs globally also need development (Geldmann et al 2015;Mace et al 2018).…”

“…The WDPA is currently the main tool used to track progress on global PA commitments (Lewis et al 2017 (Mulligan et al 2010).…”

Protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement as a threat to iconic protected areas

“…; Lewis et al. ]), highlighting the value of systematic, in‐country archival research. Future research should also focus on marine PADDD, which remains poorly documented despite a recent wave of PADDD proposals targeting marine protected areas in Australia (Rebgetz ; Roberts et al.…”

“…Despite documented PADDD events in 73 countries, systematic PADDD studies are only available for 13 countries (Golden Kroner et al 2019). These studies reveal that simple comparison of historical versions of PA databases may generate a large number of false positives (i.e., areas that appeared to be removed from protection due to version inconsistencies or boundary corrections instead of true legal changes [Cook et al 2017;Lewis et al 2019]), highlighting the value of systematic, in-country archival research. Future research should also focus on marine PADDD, which remains poorly documented despite a recent wave of PADDD proposals targeting marine protected areas in Australia (Rebgetz 2017;Roberts et al 2018) and the United States (Milman 2018).…”

Half century of protected area dynamism in the country of Gross National Happiness, Bhutan

“…However, understanding the causes of PADDD (Mascia & Pailler, 2011) will help design robust PA systems against PADDD, or more specifically those PADDD events that are detrimental to conservation (Mascia & Pailler, 2011). Though literature covering various aspects of PADDD (see Cook et al, 2017;Lewis et al, 2017;World Wildlife Fund [WWF], 2017) along with media coverage (WWF, 2017) is increasing, there is a growing recognition of the need to study PADDD and its proximate causes to understand PA dynamism and conservation implications. PADDD in the PAs of Bhutan has been explored in the context of a multiregional study (see Mascia et al, 2014).…”