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This indicator serves as a means of measuring progress toward the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of mountain ecosystems and their services.

This indicator Coverage by protected areas of important sites for mountain biodiversity shows temporal trends in the mean percentage of each important site for mountain biodiversity (i.e., those that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity) that is covered by designated protected areas. The safeguard of important sites is vital for stemming the decline in biodiversity and ensuring long term and sustainable use of mountain natural resources. The establishment of protected areas is an important mechanism for achieving this aim, and this indicator serves as a means of measuring progress toward the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of mountain ecosystems and their services, in line with obligations under international agreements. Importantly, while it can be disaggregated to report on any given single ecosystem of interest, it is not restricted to any single ecosystem type, and so faithfully reflects the intent of SDG target 15.1.

Forest Department

Forest Department

Annual

Percentage (%)

Levels of access to protected areas vary among the protected area management categories. Some areas, such as scientific reserves, are maintained in their natural state and closed to any other use. Others are used for recreation or tourism, or even open for the sustainable extraction of natural resources. In addition to protecting biodiversity, protected areas have high social and economic value: supporting local livelihoods; protecting watersheds from erosion; harbouring an untold wealth of genetic resources; supporting thriving recreation and tourism industries; providing for science, research and education; and forming a basis for cultural and other non-material values.

Protected areas, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; Dudley 2008), are clearly defined geographical spaces, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. Importantly, a variety of specific management objectives are recognised within this definition, spanning conservation, restoration, and sustainable use:

Category Ia: Strict nature reserve; 

Category Ib: Wilderness area;

Category II: National park; 

Category III: Natural monument or feature; 

Category IV: Habitat/species management area; 

Category V: Protected landscape/seascape; 

Category VI: Protected area with sustainable use of natural resources.  

Given that data for the global indicator are compiled at national levels, it is straightforward to disaggregate to national and regional levels (e.g., Han et al. 2014), or conversely to aggregate to the global level. Key Biodiversity Areas span all ecosystem types, including mountains (Rodríguez-Rodríguez et al. 2011, UNEP-WCMC 2002). The indicator can therefore be reported in combination across terrestrial and freshwater systems or disaggregated among them. However, individual Key Biodiversity Areas can encompass terrestrial and freshwater (and indeed marine) systems simultaneously, and so determining the results is not simply additive. Finally, the indicator can be disaggregated according to different protected area management categories (categories I–VI) to reflect differing specific management objectives of protected areas. In addition to the aggregation of the coverage of protected areas across important sites for mountain biodiversity as an indicator towards SDG 15.4, other disaggregations of coverage of protected areas of particular relevance as indicators towards SDG targets (Brooks et al. 2016) include:

SDG 14.5.1 Coverage of protected areas in relation to marine areas.

SDG 15.1.2 Proportion of important sites for terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity that are covered by protected areas, by ecosystem type.

Protected area coverage data can be combined with other data sources to yield further, complementary, indicators. For example, protected area overlay with ecoregional maps can be used to provide information on protected area coverage of different broad biogeographical regions. Protected area coverage of the distributions of different groups of species (e.g., mammals, birds, amphibians) can similarly provide indicators of trends in coverage of biodiversity at the species level. Protected area coverage can be combined with the Red List Index to generate indicators of the impacts of protected areas in reducing biodiversity loss (Butchart et al. 2012). Finally, indicators derived from protected area overlay can also inform sustainable urban development; for example, the overlay of protected areas onto urban maps could provide an indicator of public space as a proportion of overall city space.

This indicator is calculated from data derived from a spatial overlap between digital polygons for protected areas from the World Database on Protected Areas (IUCN & UNEP-WCMC 2017), Key Biodiversity Areas (from the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas, including Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas, Alliance for Zero Extinction sites, and other Key Biodiversity Areas; available through the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool), and mountains (UNEP-WCMC 2002). The value of the indicator at a given point in time, based on data on the year of protected area establishment recorded in the World Database on Protected Areas, is computed as the mean percentage of each Key Biodiversity Area currently recognised that is covered by protected areas.

The indicator is used to track progress towards the 2011–2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (CBD 2014, Tittensor et al. 2014), and was used as an indicator towards the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2010 Target (Butchart et al. 2010).

The indicator does not measure the effectiveness of protected areas in reducing biodiversity loss, which ultimately depends on a range of management and enforcement factors not covered by the indicator.

All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.