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Machine learning prediction of connectivity, biodiversity and resilience in the Coral Triangle

Even optimistic climate scenarios predict catastrophic consequences for coral reef ecosystems by 2100. Understanding how reef connectivity, biodiversity and resilience are shaped by climate variability would improve chances to establish sustainable management practices. In this regard, ecoregionalization and connectivity are pivotal to designating effective marine protected areas.

A Biodiversity Hotspots Treaty: The Road not Taken

After brief introductory comments on the Dasgupta Review, I turn to a subject little discussed in this report, the Convention on Biological Diversity. I explain the many weaknesses of this agreement, and its greatest missed opportunity: a protocol to conserve biodiversity as a global public good. This value of biodiversity represents only a fraction of the total value of conservation, but it’s the fraction that can only be supplied by a global treaty.

Protected Area Network Expansion and Management: Economics to improve conservation outcomes

This paper identifies the Dasgupta Review’s key points about the role of protected areas (PAs) in conserving nature. Using these factors as a foundation, this paper explores how economists can conduct analyses that improve PA decisions and promote both biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision. People’s interactions with PAs should be considered when making design, management, and restrictions decisions about PAs because those interactions are critical to determining the threats to biodiversity within PAs and the benefits produced by PAs.

Evidence that spillover from Marine Protected Areas benefits the spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) fishery in southern California

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are designed to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services. Some
MPAs are also established to benefit fisheries through increased egg and larval production, or the
spillover of mobile juveniles and adultsCall Number: [EL]Physical Description: 9 p.

Current trends suggest most Asian countries are unlikely to meet future biodiversity targets on protected areas

Aichi Target 11 committed governments to protect ≥17% of their terrestrial environments by 2020, yet it was rarely achieved, raising questions about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework goal to protect 30% by 2030. Asia is a challenging continent for such targets, combining high biodiversity with dense human populations. Here, we evaluated achievements in Asia against Aichi Target 11. We found that Asia was the most underperforming continent globally, with just 13.2% of terrestrial protected area (PA) coverage, averaging 14.1 ± SE 1.8% per country in 2020.

Spillover benefits from the world’s largest fully protected MPA

Previous research has cast doubt on the potential for marine protected areas (MPAs) to provide refuge and fishery spillover benefits for migratory species as most MPAs are small relative to the geographic range of these species. We test for evidence of spillover benefits accruing from the world’s largest fully protected MPA, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Using species-specific data collected by independent fishery observers, we examine changes in catch rates for individual vessels near to and far from the MPA before and after its expansion in 2016.

Promoting Synergies Between Climate Change Adaptation and Biodiversity

This technical brief is a joint collaboration with the Nairobi work programme expert group on biodiversity and climate change adaptation and has been published as a supplement to the NAP technical guidelines. It targets country-level Convention on Biological Diversity and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change focal points and technical staff of ministries who are engaged in the planning and implementation of NAPs and NBSAPs.

Full Document (Pdf)

Saving the ocean and climate through innovative marine protected area finance mechanisms

Ocean threats: acidification, deoxygenation, warming, heatwaves. Do we have anything useful to bend, change, or reverse the results? This brochure, conceived to advocate and educate at the UNFCCC COP27 meetings, summarises these threats and how various solutions (explained within) can actually help protect the ocean as Nature-based Solutions, if correctly constructed, and the existing and emerging financial mechanisms and institutions that can build and fortify these solutions. 

WWF Living Planet Report 2022 - Building a Nature-Positive Society

This edition of the Living Planet Report confirms the planet is in the midst of a biodiversity and climate crisis, and that we have a last chance to act. This goes beyond conservation. A nature-positive future needs transformative - game changing - shifts in how we produce, how we consume, how we govern, and what we finance. We hope it inspires you to be part of that change.

Full Report (Pdf)

Assessing the quantity and quality of marine protected areas in the Mariana Islands

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are ubiquitous in global ocean conservation and play a pivotal role in achieving local, national, and regional area-based conservation targets. Often, such targets are merely met on “paper” and lack the political or managerial resources to produce positive conservation outcomes. Here, we apply the MPA Guide – a framework for assessing the quantity and quality of marine protected areas – to Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), two U.S. territories in the Western Pacific.