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  Meeting Aichi Target 11: What does success look like for protected area systems? »

  The Convention on Biological Diversity Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 was adopted at the 10th Conference of the Parties in Nagoya, Japan. The plan outlines 20 Aichi Targets to achieve global biodiversity conservation. A fundamental global approach to biodiversity conservation is the use of protected areas. Arguably all 20 Aichi Targets have implications for the establishment and management of protected areas, but only Target 11 addresses them directly. This paper carries out a clause by clause analysis of Target 11 and makes recommendations to countries on interpreting each clause in order to best achieve biodiversity conservation using protected areas. Despite containing only 61 words, Target 11 is surprisingly dense. It applies to both marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and sets goals for spatial planning (representativeness, ecological connectivity and areas of importance for biodiversity); protected areas management (including management effectiveness and social equity); and criteria about what counts toward being a protected area under Target 11. The authors argue for a holistic interpretation of Target 11 as a way for the global community to use protected areas to change the current unacceptable trends in global biodiversity loss.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Protected Areas Systems Review of the Indo-Malayan Realm »

  This report documents the growth and changing character of the protected areas systems of the Indo-Malayan Realm over the ten year period 1986 - 1996 and updates the Review of the Protected Areas System in the Indo-Malayan Realm published by the lUCN in 1986.

  Resource Type: Reports
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  Increasing isolation of protected areas in tropical forests over the past twenty years »

  Protected areas are one of the cornerstones for conserving the world's remaining biodiversity, most of which occurs in tropical forests. We use multiple sources of satellite data to estimate the extent of forest habitat and loss over the last 20 years within and surrounding 198 of the most highly protected areas (IUCN status 1 and 2) located throughout the world's tropical forests. In the early 1980s, surrounding habitat in the 50-km unprotected or less highly protected 'buffers' enhanced the protected areas' effective size and their capacity to conserve richness of forest-obligate species above the hypothetical case of complete isolation. However, in nearly 70 of the surrounding buffers, the area of forest habitat declined during the last 20 years, while 25 experienced declines within their administrative boundaries.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Private Protected Areas: A Preliminary Study of Private Initiatives to Conserve Biodiversity in Selected African Countries (1996) »

  This pilot study demonstrates the significant contribution of private initiatives to national protected area systems and underlines the importance of extending this survey to entire regions, as part of a global review of the role private protected areas.

  Resource Type: Reports
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  Global analysis of the protection status of the world’s forests »

  This study presents a global analysis of forest cover and forest protection. An updated Global Forest Map (using MODIS2005) provided a current assessment of forest cover within 20 natural forest types. This map was overlaid onto WWF realms and ecoregions to gain additional biogeographic information on forest distribution. Using the 2008 World Database on Protected Areas, percentage forest cover protection was calculated globally, within forest types, realms and ecoregions, and within selected areas of global conservation importance.

  Results have policy relevance in terms of the target of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), reconfirmed in 2008, to effectively conserve “at least 10% of each of the world’s forest types”. Regular updates of these analyses would allow progress towards achieving that target to be monitored.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative - Working Towards High Seas Conservation »

  In 2008, the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted scientific criteria for identifying ecologically or biologically significant marine areas in need of protection on the open oceans and deep seas.

  While much scientific discovery lies ahead, available information and current and emerging methodologies already allow us to begin identifying oceanic features that are likely of particular ecological or biological importance.
   

  Resource Type: Reports
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  Everything is connected: climate and biodiversity in a fragile world »

  This publication brings together eight original articles by experts to tackle head on some of the most difficult questions facing us all:

  * How a stable climate and a productive biosphere can be secured together.
  * Why this is an opportunity for green growth.
  * How a closer partnership between the multilateral environmental agreements, in particular the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change, can help.

  Resource Type: Reports
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  Progress towards international targets for protected area coverage in mountains »

  Through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the world’s governments recently adopted a target to protect at least 17% of the global land area by 2020. This paper evaluates current levels of protection for mountains at multiple scales. It shows that the CBD’s 17% target has already been almost met at a global scale: 16.9% of the world’s mountain areas outside Antarctica fall within protected areas. However, protection of mountain areas at finer scales remains uneven and is largely insufficient, with 63% (125) of countries, 57% (4) of realms, 67% (8) of biomes, 61% (437) of ecoregions and 53% (100) of Global 200 priority ecoregions falling short of the target. The CBD target also calls for protected areas to be focussed “especially [at] areas of particular importance for biodiversity”. Important Bird Areas and Alliance for Zero Extinction sites represent existing global networks of such sites. It is therefore of major concern that 39% and 45% respectively of these sites in mountain areas remain entirely unprotected. Achievement of the CBD target in mountain regions will require more focused expansion of the protected area network in addition to enhanced management of individual sites and the wider countryside in order to ensure long term conservation of montane biodiversity and the other ecosystem services it provides.

  Resource Type: Journal Papers
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  Carbon Storage in Protected Areas »

  This reports looks at the carbon storage function of protected areas as a contribution to the development of strategies for reducing emissions from land use change. In particular, it is relevant to the current discussions surrounding reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

  Resource Type: Reports
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  Carbon emissions from forest loss in protected areas »

  This study combines the best available data on carbon stocks and deforestation with protected area data to estimate the area of forest loss within the protected area network of the humid tropical forest biome during 2000-2005.

  Resource Type: Reports