Establishing protected areas has been a leading and widespread terrestrial ecosystem conservation strategy for decades. As a result, data on the location and extent of protected areas is some of the most consistent data across countries. Signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed to a policy target of protecting 10% of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats within each country. However, despite increases in designation of protected areas, species extinction and ecosystem function loss have continued. This is primarily because counties designate protected areas in response to international pressure, but fail to enforce status or properly manage protected areas. In order to avoid rewarding the creation of these “paper parks,” the effective protected area conservation index assesses both the quantity (area) and quality of protected areas.
The effective protected area conservation index assigns points for each terrestrial biome, or type of habitat, protected within a country. This index was calculated by spatially overlaying two 1-kilometer grid spatial datasets: the World Database on Protected Areas (2007) and the Wildlife Conservation Society Human Influence Index (also called the Human Footprint). By combining these global datasets, the index measures how much habitat within protected areas is actually intact or relatively intact. We consider areas within a designated protected area that have a high human footprint (incompatible with biodiversity) to be unprotected, despite their status on paper. Based on the target set by the CBD, our target is 10% protection of each terrestrial biome within a country. Sixteen biomes are included in the indicator. In order to ensure that the above target performance for a country in one biome does not mask the below-target performance for the country in another, we capped the maximum performance at 10% protection by area for each biome.
