Protected areas (PAs) contribute to preventing, on average, just 30% of forest loss, with the lowest levels of protection observed in some of the world’s most biodiversity-rich countries, a paper has said.

Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, and Venezuela are among the nations where PAs were found to be largely ineffective, according to a study led by a researcher at Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) and published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

“The results make clear that significant improvement across the globe is required for effective protection of forests, and that it is not only the amount of forest that is protected but the quality of the protection that will determine the future of biodiversity on our planet,” said the study.

Timothy Neal, professor of economics at UNSW’s Institute for Climate Risk and Response, used satellite data from between 2001 and 2022 to quantify forest loss within and just outside the boundaries of approximately 300,000 PAs worldwide.

The study assumed that if there is a significantly higher amount of forest loss outside the boundary of a PA compared to inside, then the protection measures are effective.

Conversely, if the amount of forest loss inside and outside the boundary is relatively similar, this suggests that the protection measures are not having an impact.

“The global average estimate of the effectiveness of PAs along the boundaries is roughly 30% – this is not large, but does at least establish some degree of effectiveness,” said the study.

“While PAs are at least fairly effective in most advanced economies, several countries with significant biodiversity are facing challenges.”

These include Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, the Philippines, Russia, and Venezuela, where PAs’ impact on forest loss was near zero.

Indonesia, Gabon, and Madagascar stood at approximately 10%, while Malaysia and Brazil achieved above-average figures at 56% and 35%, respectively.

World map of the effectiveness of forest protection. Source: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

IMPROVING EFFECTIVENESS

The study called for ramping up efforts to improve the effectiveness of PAs, particularly across the so-called Global South, including through expanding REDD+ schemes, increasing foreign aid for forest conservation, and harnessing real-time alerts from satellite data to track deforestation.

It also stressed the need to advance research into the link between PAs and forest loss.

“Given the primacy and urgency of using PAs as a policy tool to preserve biodiversity and curb the negative externalities of deforestation, research into its effectiveness is vital,” the study said.

“The quantity of forest inside protected areas is only meaningful insofar as protection is effective in preventing land clearing.”

Currently representing more than 15% of Earth’s terrestrial area, PAs are considered key to advancing biodiversity conservation under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which includes a target of 30% of land protected by 2030.

However, PAs often suffer from a lack of funding, which results in poor management, as was recently pointed out by David Cooper, the former executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

According to a study published in April by US-headquartered non-profit Re:wild, PAs can even have negative impacts if there is poor enforcement and insufficient resourcing, leading to higher rates of resource extraction, poaching, or agricultural expansion.

Researchers and conservationists have growingly called for establishing more robust criteria for the identification of PAs to increase the number of areas under protection that are particularly important for global biodiversity.

A separate paper, published in March by researchers from the University of Queensland, said conservation efforts should focus on smaller, higher risk areas, as this could lead to more effective and cost-efficient outcomes.

By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com

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