June 9, 2023
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The Conservation and Protection Authority (CEPA) budget of K55 million for 2018 to 2028 is aimed at setting up conservation areas and protected ecosystems around Papua New Guinea.
The effectiveness of global protected areas for climate change mitigation
Forests play a critical role in stabilizing Earth’s climate. Establishing protected areas (PAs) represents one approach to forest conservation, but PAs were rarely created to mitigate climate change. The global impact of PAs on the carbon cycle has not previously been quantified due to a lack of accurate global-scale carbon stock maps. Here we used ~412 million lidar samples from NASA’s GEDI mission to estimate a total PA aboveground carbon (C) stock of 61.43 Gt (+/− 0.31), 26% of all mapped terrestrial woody C.
The ‘Paper Park Index’: Evaluating Marine Protected Area effectiveness through a global study of stakeholder perceptions
Governments around the world are increasingly committed to reaching terrestrial and marine conservation goals. But achieving such commitments is challenging, and conservation targets that are reached on paper, e.g., in terms of square kilometers protected, can be misleading. Designating Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) does not guarantee achieving marine conservation goals, and so-called ‘paper parks,’ i.e., MPAs that are legally designated but ineffective, are common.
May 12, 2023
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The Leave it in the Ground Initiative (LINGO), in collaboration with Oil Change International, today launched the findings of a global analysis which maps fossil fuels underneath the world’s protected areas.
May 3, 2023
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The Independent Papua New Guinea Biodiversity and Climate Fund has issued a second funding call for projects aiming to earn protected area status and help the megadiverse country reach its international biodiversity commitments.
April 28, 2023
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At a global scale, conservationists have done a remarkable job of conserving land, creating over 6,000 terrestrial protected areas per year over the past decade. But small has become the norm.
April 11, 2023
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Ensuring Resilient Ecosystems and Protected Areas in the Solomon Islands was the theme of a data workshop, co-facilitated by the Environmental and Monitoring and Governance(EMG) Programme of Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and the Solomon Island’s Ministry of Env
Post-2020 biodiversity framework challenged by cropland expansion in protected areas
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Protected areas (PAs) are essential for biodiversity conservation but are threatened by cropland expansion. Recent studies have only reported global cropland expansion in large PAs between 1990 and 2005. However, the amount of cropland expansion in global PAs (including relatively small PAs) since the 2000s is unclear. Using 30-m cropland maps, we find that the cropland expansion in PAs accelerated dramatically from 2000 to 2019, compared with that of global croplands.
Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change
Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here, we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conservation effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analyses reveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are currently distributed in PAs, and that this proportion will remain unaltered under future climate change. Indeed, loss of species’ distributional ranges will be lower inside PAs than outside them.
March 11, 2023
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In a new study published in Global Change Biology, Sean Parks, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, and his colleagues analyzed a database of global protected areas to see how well these nature rese