Area-based conservation in the twenty-first century (original) (raw)

Humanity will soon define a new era for nature-one that seeks to transform decades of underwhelming responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Area-based conservation efforts, which include both protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, are likely to extend and diversify. However, persistent shortfalls in ecological representation and management effectiveness diminish the potential role of area-based conservation in stemming biodiversity loss. Here we show how the expansion of protected areas by national governments since 2010 has had limited success in increasing the coverage across different elements of biodiversity (ecoregions, 12,056 threatened species, 'Key Biodiversity Areas' and wilderness areas) and ecosystem services (productive fisheries, and carbon services on land and sea). To be more successful after 2020, area-based conservation must contribute more effectively to meeting global biodiversity goals-ranging from preventing extinctions to retaining the most-intact ecosystems-and must better collaborate with the many Indigenous peoples, community groups and private initiatives that are central to the successful conservation of biodiversity. The long-term success of area-based conservation requires parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to secure adequate financing, plan for climate change and make biodiversity conservation a far stronger part of land, water and sea management policies. Governments, policy-makers and many members of the conservation community have long held that protected areas are a fundamental cornerstone of biodiversity conservation 1,2. The importance of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) is also beginning to be recognized 3,4. OECMs were defined by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2018 as places outside the protected-area estate that deliver effective biodiversity conservation, such as government-run water catchment areas, territories conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as some private conservation initiatives (Box 1). Both protected areas and OECMs (here referred to collectively as area-based conservation measures) are acknowledged in the CBD and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 5. In particular, the current ten-year Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 6 of the CBD-which was agreed to by 168 countries in 2010-has an explicit target (Aichi Target 11) that stipulates 'at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well-connected systems of protected areas and OECMs, and integrated into the wider landscape and seascape' by 2020. This target has dominated the area-based conservation agenda for the past decade. Between 2010 and 2019, protected areas expanded from covering 14.1% to 15.3% of global land and freshwater environments (excluding Antarctica) and from 2.9% to 7.5% of the marine realm 7 (Figs. 1, 2). Although it is not yet possible to track their global extent systematically, OECMs have emerged as a category of area-based conservation since 2010 8. However, despite these encouraging efforts, some disconcerting spatial dynamics in the global protected-area estate are becoming more apparent. One recent analysis showed that, on average, 1.1 million km 2 of land and sea were recorded as being removed from the global protected-area estate annually between 2006 and 2018 9. There is also