Helping Protected Areas Reach Their Full Potential
Protected areas – areas of land and sea that are protected from human activity because of their ecological or cultural value – are crucial for maintaining the earth’s biodiversity and stemming climate change. This paper, published in Nature, provides a review of the current and future status of protected areas around the world. It elaborates on several significant points, including:
- The number and coverage of terrestrial and marine protected areas have increased rapidly in the past several decades. However, they are still significantly lower than targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a multilateral treaty outlining commitments for biodiversity conservation. As of April 2014, protected areas covered 12.5% of the terrestrial realm and 3% of the marine realm, figures that are well short of CBD targets of 17% and 10%, respectively.
- Protected areas have expanded in scope and purpose. Originally created to conserve iconic landscapes and preserve species habitat, they are now expected to serve additional purposes, from contributing to local livelihoods and bolstering tourism to providing sources of clean water. The authors note that such changes make protected areas “vulnerable to accusations of failure to achieve one or more of these objectives.”
- The ecological diversity of protected areas is still quite low, and many threatened species are not adequately represented within them. The authors cite a recent analysis indicating that 17% of threatened birds, amphibians, and mammals are not found in a single protected area. Most (85%) do not have sufficiently large populations for long-term survival.
- Research on the effectiveness of protected areas is preliminary. Studies indicate that many protected areas, including globally-renowned sites like the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, are ecologically degrading in large part due to poor management and under-resourcing.
- Some governments are sliding back on their commitments to support protected areas by making funding cuts and downgrading areas by authorizing increases in human activities. Some are also downsizing areas by making legal boundary changes, and setting policies of degazettement, the loss of legal protection for an entire protected area.
The authors warn that a “fundamental increase in support of the global protected area estate is now urgently needed if it is to fully deliver its potential.” They make three primary recommendations: countries should create more effective management regimes for protected areas; countries should invest adequately in protected areas and recognize their return on investment; and the wider community should take collective responsibility for protected areas, since governments may not supply sufficient financial resources.
Finally, the authors state that countries must recognize the important role protected areas play in preserving global biodiversity and must prioritize their preservation. They note that the annual cost of adequately managing global protected areas is between $45 billion and $76 billion, the lower of which is 2.5% of the global military expenditure. As the authors conclude, “it seems sensible to invest an amount equivalent to a tiny percentage of global military spending to help provide security for humans and all other living organisms on Earth through a system of marine and terrestrial protected areas that is operating at its full capacity.”