Global trends in conserved areas

Note: Area conserved includes area protected as well as other effective area-based conservation measures. 

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Note: ^[A] The global total excluding Antarctica is published in the Protected Planet Report 2020. 

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Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures

Protected areas together with OECMs are referred to as conserved areas. Protected areas recognized as meeting the International Union for Conservation of Nature definition are used for calculating protected area coverage: "A protected area is a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values."

Other effective area-based conservation measures must meet the Convention on Biodiversity definition to be used for calculating OECM coverage: "A geographically defined area other than a Protected Area, which is governed and managed in ways that achieve positive and sustained long-term outcomes for the in situ conservation of biodiversity."

World Database on Protected Areas and World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures

The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre compiles the data provided by protected area and OECM authorities. For example, government agencies provide data on federal protected areas and OECMs, sub-national agencies provide data on sub-national areas, non-governmental organizations may provide data on areas they own and manage, communities may provide data on the areas they conserve and manage, and so on. 

For Canada, the data providers include:

• the Government of Canada which provides the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database
• Ramsar Secretariat, on behalf of Ramsar Contracting Parties, for wetlands recognized under the Ramsar Convention
• the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for World Heritage Sites

The capacity, methods and formats of data management vary among data providers; therefore, the global databases are a mosaic of geographic information system data at varying levels of completeness, resolution and quality. Nevertheless, data must meet a minimum standard (PDF; 1.36 MB). If an area is no longer conserved, it is removed from the database.

Data include all protected areas and OECMs reported as existing in May 2023. Antarctica is excluded because it cannot be attributed to any particular nation. For this reason, it is not included under the jurisdictional clause of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

International comparisons in the indicator are restricted to a set of 10 countries. Where possible, the Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators program uses a common set of countries for international comparison. Selected countries are the Group of 7 (G7), Australia (the population, population density and territorial extent are similar to Canada), the Russian Federation (a large northern country like Canada) and Sweden (which has a similar climate).

National and global statistics were compiled from the May 2023 snapshots of the databases. The databases are updated on a monthly basis as new data are received. However, there is a time lag between when a data provider submits its data and when updates are completed. This is due to time needed to review, verify, incorporate and analyze the data. Although data providers may submit their data as information becomes available, updates are requested at least every 5 years. At any given time, data from different countries may have different date stamps. The May 2023 World Database on Protected Areas and World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures snapshots contain Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database data date stamped December 2022.

The World Database on Protected Areas and the World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (the databases) are held within a geographic information system. They store information about protected areas / OECMs, including attributes such as their name, designation, date of designation and documented area, as well as their geographic location as a point or a polygon.

Data selection

All sites included in the databases are used for protected area and OECM coverage analyses, with the exception of:

• sites that have a status of Proposed or Not Reported
• sites submitted as points with no reported area
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Man and the Biosphere Reserves, on the basis that the buffer and transitional zones of many of these sites are not protected. Core zones are usually protected areas designated at a national level and are typically accounted for in the analyses

Man and the Biosphere Reserve sites reported as OECMs are included in the coverage analyses.

Sites with an unknown year of establishment are treated as if they had been conserved prior to 1990.

Data analyses

The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre completed the data analyses used for the indicator. A summary of the methodology used to calculate the global and national protected area and OECM totals is outlined on the Protected Planet website.

The spatial analysis uses a world base map that combines the exclusive economic zones and the terrestrial country boundaries (World Vector Shoreline). Each country is given its own base layer that is used to calculate national totals. The national totals calculated using a global data layer may differ from the results reported nationally. For more information on the differences between the analyses completed by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the Government of Canada, please refer to the Caveats and limitations section.

National totals

The World Conservation Monitoring Centre estimates national protected area and OECM totals separately. Since the indicator does not report OECMs for the comparison by country, only the methods used to calculate national protected area totals are provided below.

National protected area totals are calculated from the monthly release of the World Database on Protected Areas. If the boundaries of a site were not known, but its location and extent were known, it was modelled as a circular buffer around its point location. All of the site boundaries (polygons) were combined into a single data layer by country. This correctly accounts for overlaps among polygons within the country, but retains overlaps between countries. 

The data layer was intersected with the world base map to establish country boundaries, including coastlines and marine boundaries. Transboundary protected areas were spatially divided based on the location of each part of the protected area and allocated to the corresponding countries using the world base map.

The intersected output was converted to an equal area projection to estimate the total protected area coverage (in square kilometres) by country. For each country, the percentage of terrestrial area protected was calculated by dividing the total area protected by the total area of its land (including inland waters). The percentage of marine area protected was calculated by dividing the total area of marine protected areas by the total national area of the territorial seas and exclusive economic zone.

National analyses of marine protected area are conducted for the combined territorial sea and exclusive economic zone of each country.^{Footnote 7}  Claimed areas of the continental shelf are not considered.

Global totals

The World Conservation Monitoring Centre estimates global protected area and OECM totals separately. Global protected area totals are calculated from the monthly release of the World Database on Protected Areas. If the boundaries of a site were not known, but its location and extent were known, it was modelled as a circular buffer around its point location. All of the site boundaries (polygons) were combined into a single data layer to account for overlaps among polygons and avoid double counting.

The global protected areas data layer was intersected with the world base map. This intersected output was converted to an equal area projection to estimate the total protected area coverage (in square kilometres). Global terrestrial protected area coverage (percentage) was calculated by dividing the total area of terrestrial protected areas by the global terrestrial area. Antarctica was excluded from the analysis. Global marine protected area coverage was calculated by dividing the total area of marine protected areas by the global marine area. Global marine area includes territorial seas, exclusive economic zones and areas beyond national jurisdiction (beyond 200 nautical miles), often referred to as the "high seas."

The steps taken to calculate global OECM totals are similar to those used for global protected areas totals. Global OECM totals are calculated from the monthly release of the World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures. If the boundaries of a site were not known, but its location and extent were known, it was modelled as a circular buffer around its point location. All of the site boundaries (polygons) were combined into a single data layer. Using the global protected areas data layer, areas where protected areas and OECMs overlap were erased from the OECMs data layer. The global OECMs data layer was intersected with the world base map. This intersected output was converted to an equal area projection to estimate the total OECM coverage (in square kilometres). Calculated OECM area are summed for the terrestrial and marine biomes.

Lastly, the total global conserved area coverage is calculated. Total terrestrial conserved area coverage is the sum of the total area of terrestrial protected areas and the total area of terrestrial OECMs divided by the total global terrestrial area excluding Antarctica. Total marine conserved area coverage is equal to total global marine protected areas coverage and total global marine OECM coverage.

The indicator reports only protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures recognized under the international definitions that have been reported to the World Database on Protected Areas and the World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (the database). The addition of OECMs has been in development since 2019. To assess progress towards Aichi Target 11, the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre uses both protected areas and OECMs from the databases.

Although Canadian OECMs are captured at the global level, there are very few reported OECMs. As of May 2023, 28% (231 of 829 OECMs) of the OECMs in the database have been submitted by Canada. None of the other countries used for comparison in the indicator reported any OECMs.

Data availability and quality are improving, but not evenly across the globe. Data on protected area coverage are available for over 190 countries and territories. However, there are known gaps.

The United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre calculates national and global protected area and OECM coverage through a series of spatial analyses of the databases. A summary of these analyses is outlined in the Methods section.

The methods stated that if the boundaries of a site were unknown, but its location and extent were known, it was modelled as a circular buffer around its point location. However, the buffered points can underestimate or overestimate conserved area totals. The circular buffer may cover areas where conserved areas do not exist (overestimation) or overlap with existing conserved areas (underestimation). For sites that are split between the terrestrial and marine biomes, buffering makes it difficult to assign portions to the correct biome.

Sources of discrepancies between the global estimates for Canada and Canada's national reporting on conserved areas

The date stamps of Canada's national reporting and the global estimates for Canada can vary. However, at the time of publishing, the global estimates for Canada taken from the May 2023 update of the World Database on Protected Areas align with the December 31, 2021 snapshot of the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database. The World Conservation Monitoring Centre's estimates for Canada are based on:

• the December 31, 2021 snapshot of the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database, updated in the World Database on Protected Areas in 2022
• UNESCO World Heritage Sites data, updated in the World Database on Protected Areas in 2021
• Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance data updated in the World Database on Protected Areas in 2020

Because of the way in which the World Database on Protected Areas and the World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures are compiled, recently designated areas may not appear in the databases.

Canada's national reporting does not include data reported by international conventions for World Heritage Sites and Ramsar sites.

The global estimates for Canada and Canada's national reporting on conserved areas use different map projections and geographic base layers, as appropriate to the scale of their respective analyses. These cause differences in the estimated area of protected and conserved areas as well as in the baseline areas for terrestrial and marine territory. In Canada, marine and terrestrial areas are labelled by the reporting jurisdiction and this information is used in the Canadian analysis. The Canadian analysis uses national data layers that provide more detailed information for Canada. For the World Conservation Monitoring Centre analyses, polygons are divided into marine and terrestrial categories using mapped coastlines from a global layer. This causes differences in the marine/terrestrial split, where many marine coastal areas in Canada are classified as terrestrial in the World Conservation Monitoring Centre analyses. Because the majority of Canada's marine conserved area is coastal, the global conserved area estimates for Canada are skewed towards the terrestrial biome. These methodological differences contribute to discrepancies between the global estimates for Canada and Canada's national reporting on conserved areas.