Protected area connectivity: Shortfalls in global targets and country-level priorities

TLDR

Connectivity of protected areas is essential for achieving conservation goals. The study evaluates countries’ progress toward Aichi Target 11—requiring 17 % of land in well‑connected protected areas by 2020—and identifies priority actions for improving or sustaining connectivity, such as increasing coverage, strategically locating new PAs, enhancing landscape permeability, coordinating neighboring PAs, and fostering transnational collaboration. The authors use the Protected Connected (ProtConn) indicator, refined to exclude isolation caused by seas and foreign lands, to quantify how well each country’s terrestrial PA system promotes connectivity. Globally, only 7.5 % of land is protected and connected—about half the overall PA coverage of 14.7%—and just 30 % of countries meet the Aichi Target 11 connectivity element, underscoring the need for substantial efforts to improve PA connectivity and revealing strengths and weaknesses in current PA system designs.

Abstract

Connectivity of protected areas (PAs) is crucial for meeting their conservation goals. We provide the first global evaluation of countries' progress towards Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity that is to have at least 17% of the land covered by well-connected PA systems by 2020. We quantify how well the terrestrial PA systems of countries are designed to promote connectivity, using the Protected Connected (ProtConn) indicator. We refine ProtConn to focus on the part of PA connectivity that is in the power of a country to influence, i.e. not penalizing countries for PA isolation due to the sea and to foreign lands. We found that globally only 7.5% of the area of the countries is covered by protected connected lands, which is about half of the global PA coverage of 14.7%, and that only 30% of the countries currently meet the Aichi Target 11 connectivity element. These findings suggest the need for considerable efforts to improve PA connectivity globally. We further identify the main priorities for improving or sustaining PA connectivity in each country: general increase of PA coverage, targeted designation of PAs in strategic locations for connectivity, ensuring permeability of the unprotected landscapes between PAs, coordinated management of neighbouring PAs within the country, and/or transnational coordination with PAs in other countries. Our assessment provides a key contribution to evaluate progress towards global PA connectivity targets and to highlight important strengths and weaknesses of the design of PA systems for connectivity in the world's countries and regions.