Abstract
Protected areas are an essential component of global conservation efforts. Although extensive information is available on the location of protected areas governed by governments, data on privately protected areas remain elusive at the global level. These are areas governed by private individuals and groups—ranging from families to religious institutions to companies—that meet IUCN's definition of a protected area: a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. As the world's governments prepare to adopt a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework to guide conservation over the next decade, we argue that, without complete data on privately protected areas, they do so without a vital piece of the puzzle.
Highlights
New Zealand, already lauded for their success in addressing the COVID-19 crisis (Baker et al, 2020), set another example for the global community in 2020, becoming one of only a handful of countries to recognise the importance of privately protected areas (PPAs) by recording substantial numbers in the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2021a)
This may not seem like a significant achievement, but PPAs are critical to meeting global conservation targets, yet are too often missing from global accounting
The Protected Planet Report 2020 revealed that, while significant progress has been made toward the percentage coverage elements of the Strategic Plan’s Target 11, slower progress has been made in ensuring that the world’s conservation network is representative of ecosystems and species, TABLE 1 | Countries and territories with data on PPAs recorded in the WDPA, June 2021 (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2021a), based on records with the governance types “Individual landowners,” “For-profit organisations,” and “Non-profit organisations,” plus the New Zealand PPAs, which do not have a reported governance type
Summary
New Zealand, already lauded for their success in addressing the COVID-19 crisis (Baker et al, 2020), set another example for the global community in 2020, becoming one of only a handful of countries to recognise the importance of privately protected areas (PPAs) by recording substantial numbers in the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2021a) On first reading, this may not seem like a significant achievement, but PPAs are critical to meeting global conservation targets, yet are too often missing from global accounting. PPAs are diverse, encompassing the conservation efforts of a multitude of different actors They are defined as protected areas (i.e., a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values) under private governance. It is doing so without acknowledging protected areas dependent on the labour, financing, time, passion, and commitment (Scrimgeour et al, 2017) of tens of thousands of private groups and individuals
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