Making protected areas effective for biodiversity, climate and food

12 pages, figures, supporting information https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16664.-- Data Availability Statement: The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article. The xls spreadsheet supporting the development of the Shoots visuals can be found under https://zenodo.org/record/7690684

The spatial extent of marine and terrestrial protected areas (PAs) was among the most intensely debated issues prior to the decision about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Positive impacts of PAs on habitats, species diversity and abundance are well documented. Yet, biodiversity loss continues unabated despite efforts to protect 17% of land and 10% of the oceans by 2020. This casts doubt on whether extending PAs to 30%, the agreed target in the Kunming-Montreal GBF, will indeed achieve meaningful biodiversity benefits. Critically, the focus on area coverage obscures the importance of PA effectiveness and overlooks concerns about the impact of PAs on other sustainability objectives. We propose a simple means of assessing and visualising the complex relationships between PA area coverage and effectiveness and their effects on biodiversity conservation, nature-based climate mitigation and food production. Our analysis illustrates how achieving a 30% PA global target could be beneficial for biodiversity and climate. It also highlights important caveats: (i) achieving lofty area coverage objectives alone will be of little benefit without concomitant improvements in effectiveness, (ii) trade-offs with food production particularly for high levels of coverage and effectiveness are likely and (iii) important differences in terrestrial and marine systems need to be recognized when setting and implementing PA targets. The CBD's call for a significant increase in PA will need to be accompanied by clear PA effectiveness goals to reduce and revert dangerous anthropogenic impacts on socio-ecological systems and biodiversity

AA, RF and MR are supported by the Helmholtz Association. JC was supported by BiodivERsA (METRODIVER) and Fondation de France. MC and YJS acknowledge funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 869300 (FutureMARES) and No 817578 (Triatlas). MC acknowledges support from the Spanish Research project ProOceans (RETOS-PID2020-118097RB-I00). PL acknowledges support from the LabEx BASC (ANR-11-LABX-0034). YJS acknowledges support from the Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call under the BiodivScen ERA-Net COFUND programme (Sombee project, ANR-18-EBI4-0003-01). [...] This work acknowledges the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

Peer reviewed