Assessing the conservation effectiveness of the World’s protected areas: A habitat quality and human activities perspective

Abstract

The World’s Protected Areas (WDPA) have been established for more than 100 years and serve an essential role in global biodiversity conservation. Assessing the conservation effectiveness of the WDPA is important for understanding the current status of global biodiversity conservation and formulating corresponding improvement measures. However, previous studies still lack to assess the conservation effectiveness of the WDPA at a global scale with a human activities and habitat quality perspective. Here, we construct a framework for evaluating conservation effectiveness from the perspective of human activities and habitat quality, and attempt to assess the conservation effectiveness of the WDPA. The study results found that habitat quality in the WDPA has not degraded over the past two decades and that human-land relationship have been further harmonized. However, trends in the impact of human activities on habitat quality varied across analytical models. The findings of this study affirm the conservation effectiveness of the WDPA but also raise some vigilance, which can provide scientific advice for policymakers further to improve the differentiated protective measures of the WDPA.