Guardian>What is Guardian?>Why we do it>Overview
Around 12% of land is protected by law in recognition of nature's role in providing food, water and a stable climate to sustain life. We need to make sure this protection is a reality on the ground, which is where we need your help.
Guardian>What is Guardian?>Why we do it>The issue
Protecting the protected areas
- Whilst some 12% of land on the Earth is nominally protected, much of this protected landscape remains threatened by climate change and agricultural encroachment.
- Protected areas are critical to the conservation of species and provision of environmental services to humans, including the provision of clean freshwater and carbon storage to mitigate climate change.
- Protected areas are also home to a range of indigenous peoples.
- Well funded, well managed protected areas really do work at protecting nature and the important environmental services that it provides for the future. By way of example, these areas have been protected successfully, see how protection works!
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Guardian>What is Guardian?>Why we do it>Where?
What protected areas?
There are more than 200,000 protected areas in the world. These are mainly nationally designated sites of importance for the landscapes, species or archaeologically important sites that they contain or for the environmental services (for example clean water) that they provide to local populations. Increasingly, there are also private reserves and sites of international importance. Almost 16 million km2 is nominally protected.
Guardian>What is Guardian?>Why we do it>Why bother?
Why are they worth keeping?
Protected areas are the last refuge for many of the world's most unique, rare and important species. Global populations of these species are increasingly concentrated in protected areas that form natural islands in a 'sea' of agricultural or urban land. Protected areas are critical to ensuring the survival of much of the world's biodiversity and thereby ensuring the continued provision of important ecosystem services to humans, for free, including uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the provision of clean, high quality. Protected areas are important sources of genetic material for the current biotechnological revolution and will be increasingly important spaces for peace and recreation in an increasingly crowded planet.
Guardian>What is Guardian?>Why we do it>Why me?
Isn't that the government's job?
The management of protected areas is - in many countries - chronically underfunded and systems for the designation, monitoring, assessment and management of protected areas are often poorly developed. Most of the world's protected land and important biodiversity is in the tropics - usually in countries with very poor economic resources. Such countries have to focus on economic development and have few resources for the luxuries such as nature conservation. Yet with some careful planning and management economic development can progress without environmental destruction and there is good evidence to show that once countries have economic resources they are very keen on environmental protection.
Given that almost all countries will need to protect more land and sea to meet their obligations to the convention on biodiversity, the existing meagre resources will be spread over even more and larger sites. Underfunding of protected areas means that they are poorly protected against illegal activities including logging, hunting and fishing but also the impact of legal interventions in parks including agriculture, mining and petroleum prospection, commercial fishing and other activities is poorly known. Moreover, where local communities are not sufficiently compensated for the loss of formerly utilised lands to conservation and alternative livelihoods are not provided, ecosystems will continue to be plundered unsustainably even if nominally protected.
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