The ecological representativeness of the global protected areas estate in 2009: progress towards the CBD 2010 target

Abstract

<p style="text-align: left">The Convention on Biological Diversity has established a global target for the <p style="text-align: left">protection of 10% of each of the world's ecological regions by 2010. This report uses the <p style="text-align: left">WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World and the 2009 version of the World Database of <p style="text-align: left">Protected Areas to analyse progress towards achieving this politically established <p style="text-align: left">conservation goal across the world. Overall, five of the seven realms (excluding <p style="text-align: left">Antarctica), and 11 of the 14 biomes have over 10% protected area coverage. However, <p style="text-align: left">only 54% of the WWF terrestrial ecoregions reach the 10% protected area coverage <p style="text-align: left">target. Nations are still working to develop their protected area networks and it is likely <p style="text-align: left">that further ecoregions will reach the 10% protected area coverage target for terrestrial <p style="text-align: left">ecological regions by 2010. Although protection of the Global 200 priority ecoregions is <p style="text-align: left">higher than for the total set of ecoregions, with 72 % reaching the 10% target, previous <p style="text-align: left">studies have suggested that areas of high biodiversity may require higher levels of <p style="text-align: left">protection and conservation planning. The approaching 2010 deadline provides a further <p style="text-align: left">opportunity to discuss and assess the effectiveness of the 10% target in affording <p style="text-align: left">adequate protection for species and habitats, which needs to be addressed in more detail in the coming year.