Quantifying the contribution to biodiversity conservation of protected areas governed by indigenous peoples and local communities

Abstract

Quantifying the contribution of protected areas (PAs) to conservation is important, challenging, and a key focus of various indicators within national and global frameworks for environmental conservation evaluation. Estimating coverage of PAs is a core indicator for various international agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals (BIP, 2017) and the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 (CBD, 2017). However, other PA indicators are more complex to assess, such as ecological representation, effectiveness, equity and livelihoods - issues important for local communities and indigenous peoples (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2004). Aichi Target 11 combines PA coverage goals with livelihood or well-being aspects, such as equity of conservation benefit distribution, making a full assessment of progress towards the target difficult. Furthermore, gaps in data and knowledge mean there is little to no mechanism for measuring indicators of some Aichi targets, or certain aspects of targets, especially at the international level (Tittensor et al., 2014). Protected areas are important for multiple purposes (Naughton-Treves et al., 2005; Rodrigues et al., 2004), varying in management and governance parameters (Dudley, 2008; Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2013). In this paper, governance refers to who has authority for making decisions about the protected area, e.g., state authority, local authority or community authority, and management is the range of actions taken to meet objectives (from Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2013). Conservation areas with non-state governance are harder to locate and monitor than other governance types and are thus less well recognized (Kothari et al., 2012), underreported in global databases (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2016a), and less likely to be receiving financial and/or technical support than their government counterparts. The lack of quantitative information about these areas and their limited recognition within official protected area systems hampers opportunities to meet conservation and human well-being targets.