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One-sixth of the global terrestrial surface nowfallswithin protected areas (PAs), making it essential to understand how far they mitigate the increasing pressures on nature which characterize the Anthropocene. In by far the largest analysis of this question to date and not restricted to forested PAs, we compiled data from 12,315 PAs across 152 countries to investigate their ability to reduce human pressure and how this varies with socioeconomic and management circumstances. While many PAs show positive outcomes, strikingly we find that compared with matched unprotected areas, PAs have on average not reduced a compound index of pressure change over the past 15 y. Moreover, in tropical regions average pressure change from cropland conversion has increased inside PAs even more than in matched unprotected areas. However, our results also confirm previous studies restricted to forest PAs, where pressures are increasing, but less than in counterfactual areas. Our results also show that countries with high national-level development scores have experienced lower rates of pressure increase over the past 15 y within their PAs compared with a matched outside area. Our results caution against the rapid establishment of new PAs without simultaneously addressing the conditions needed to enable their success.

Cultural ecosystem services are defined by people's perception of the environment, which make them hard to quantify systematically. Methods to describe cultural benefits from ecosystems typically include resource-demanding survey techniques, which are not suitable to assess cultural ecosystem services for large areas. In this paper we explore a method to quantify cultural benefits through the enjoyment of natured-based tourism, by assessing the potential tourism attractiveness of species for each protected area in Africa using the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. We use the number of pictures of wildlife posted on a photo sharing website as a proxy for charisma, popularity, and ease of observation, as these factors combined are assumed to determine how attractive species are for the global wildlife tourist. Based on photo counts of 2473 African animals and plants, species that seem most attractive to nature-based tourism are the Lion, African Elephant and Leopard. Combining the photo counts with species range data, African protected areas with the highest potential to attract wildlife tourists based on attractive species occurrence were Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, Mukogodo Forest Reserve located just north of Mount Kenya, and Addo Elephant National Park in South-Africa. The proposed method requires only three data sources which are freely accessible and available online, which could make the proposed index tractable for large scale quantitative ecosystem service assessments. The index directly links species presence to the tourism potential of protected areas, making the connection between nature and human benefits explicit, but excludes other important contributing factors for tourism, such as accessibility and safety. This social media based index provides a broad understanding of those species that are popular globally; in many cases these are not the species of highest conservation concern.

It is widely accepted that the main driver of the observed decline in biological diversity is increasing human pressure on Earth's ecosystems. However, the spatial patterns of change in human pressure and their relation to conservation efforts are less well known. We developed a spatially and temporally explicit map of global change in human pressure over 2 decades between 1990 and 2010 at a resolution of 10 km². We evaluated 22 spatial data sets representing different components of human pressure and used them to compile a temporal human pressure index (THPI) based on 3 data sets: human population density, land transformation, and electrical power infrastructure. We investigated how the THPI within protected areas was correlated to International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) management categories and the human development index (HDI) and how the THPI was correlated to cumulative pressure on the basis of the original human footprint index. Since the early 1990s, human pressure increased 64% of the terrestrial areas; the largest increases were in Southeast Asia. Protected areas also exhibited overall increases in human pressure, the degree of which varied with location and IUCN management category. Only wilderness areas and natural monuments (management categories Ib and III) exhibited decreases in pressure. Protected areas not assigned any category exhibited the greatest increases. High HDI values correlated with greater reductions in pressure across protected areas, while increasing age of the protected area correlated with increases in pressure. Our analysis is an initial step toward mapping changes in human pressure on the natural world over time. That only 3 data sets could be included in our spatio‐temporal global pressure map highlights the challenge to measuring pressure changes over time.

Protected areas (PAs) are a key tool in efforts to safeguard biodiversity against increasing anthropogenic threats. As signatories to the 2011–2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, 196 nations pledged support for expansion in the extent of the global PA estate and the quality of PA management. While this has resulted in substantial increases in PA designations, many sites lack the resources needed to guarantee effective biodiversity conservation. Using management reports from 2167 PAs (with an area representing 23% of the global terrestrial PA estate), we demonstrate that less than a quarter of these PAs report having adequate resources in terms of staffing and budget. Using data on the geographic ranges of the 11,919 terrestrial vertebrate species overlapping our sample of PAs, we estimate that only 4–9% of terrestrial amphibians, birds, and mammals are sufficiently represented within the existing global PA estate, when only adequately resourced PAs are considered. While continued expansion of the world’s PAs is necessary, a shift in emphasis from quantity to quality is critical to effectively respond to the current biodiversity crisis.

Ensuring that protected areas (PAs) maintain the biodiversity within their boundaries is fundamental in achieving global conservation goals. Despite this objective, wildlife abundance changes in PAs are patchily documented and poorly understood. Here, we use linear mixed effect models to explore correlates of population change in 1,902 populations of birds and mammals from 447 PAs globally. On an average, we find PAs are maintaining populations of monitored birds and mammals within their boundaries. Wildlife population trends are more positive in PAs located in countries with higher development scores, and for larger-bodied species. These results suggest that active management can consistently overcome disadvantages of lower reproductive rates and more severe threats experienced by larger species of birds and mammals. The link between wildlife trends and national development shows that the social and economic conditions supporting PAs are critical for the successful maintenance of their wildlife populations. Protected areas are intended to safeguard wildlife, but their effectiveness has at times been questioned. Barnes, Craigie, and colleagues show that protected areas do offer refuge—maintaining their bird and mammal abundances—but with greater success for larger-bodied species and in more developed nations.

Consumption of globally traded agricultural commodities like soy and palm oil is one of the primary causes of deforestation and biodiversity loss in some of the world’s most species-rich ecosystems. However, the complexity of global supply chains has confounded efforts to reduce impacts. Companies and governments with sustainability commitments struggle to understand their own sourcing patterns,while the activities of more unscrupulous actors are conveniently masked by the opacity of global trade. We combine state-of-the-art material flow, economic trade, and biodiversity impact models to produce an innovative approach for understanding the impacts of trade on biodiversity loss and the roles of remote markets and actors.We do this for the production of soy in the Brazilian Cerrado, home to more than 5% of the worlds species. Distinct sourcing patterns of consumer countries and trading companies result in substantially different impacts on endemic species. Connections between individual buyers and specific hot spots explain the disproportionate impacts of some actors on endemic species and individual threatened species, such as the particular impact of European Union consumers on the recent habitat losses for the iconic giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). In making these linkages explicit, our approach enables commodity buyers and investors to target their efforts much more closely to improve the sustainability of their supply chains in their sourcing regions while also transforming our ability to monitor the impact of such commitments over time.

Protected areas (PAs) represent a cornerstone of efforts to safeguard biodiversity, and if effective should reduce threats to biodiversity. We present the most comprehensive assessment of threats to terrestrial PAs, based on in situ data from 1,961 PAs across 149 countries, assessed by PA managers and local stakeholders. Unsustainable hunting was the most commonly reported threat and occurred in 61% of all PAs, followed by disturbance from recreational activities occurring in 55%, and natural system modifications from fire or its suppression in 49%. The number of reported threats was lower in PAs with greater remoteness, higher control of corruption, and lower human development scores. The main reported threats in developing countries were linked to overexploitation for resource extraction, while negative impacts from recreational activities dominated in developed countries. Our results show that many of the most serious threats to PAs are difficult to monitor with remote sensing, and highlight the importance of in situ threat data to inform the implementation of more effective biodiversity conservation in the global protected area estate.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a major global strategy for enhancing conservation outcomes while also seeking to improve rural livelihoods; however, little evidence of socioeconomic outcomes exists. We present a national-level analysis that empirically estimates socioeconomic impacts of CBNRM across Tanzania, while systematically controlling for potential sources of bias. Specifically, we apply a difference-in-differences model to national-scale, cross-sectional data to estimate the impact of three different CBNRM governance regimes on wealth, food security and child health, considering differential impacts of CBNRM on wealthy and poor populations. We also explore whether or not longer-standing CBNRM efforts provide more benefits than recently-established CBNRM areas. Our results show significant improvements in household food security in CBNRM areas compared with non-CBNRM areas, but household wealth and health outcomes in children are generally not significantly different. No one CBNRM governance regime demonstrates consistently different welfare outcomes than the others. Wealthy households benefit more from CBNRM than poor households and CBNRM benefits appear to increase with longer periods of implementation. Perhaps evidence of CBNRM benefits is limited because CBNRM hasn't been around long enough to yield demonstrable outcomes. Nonetheless, achieving demonstrable benefits to rural populations will be crucial for CBNRM's future success in Tanzania.

Only 10 years remain to achieve all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally, so there is a growing need to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of action by targeting multiple SDGs. The SDGs were conceived as an ‘indivisible whole’, but interactions between SDGs need to be better understood. Several previous assessments have begun to explore interactions including synergies and possible conflicts between the SDGs, and differ widely in their conclusions. Although some highlight the role of the more environmentally-focused SDGs in underpinning sustainable development, none specifically focuses on environment–human linkages. Assessing interactions between SDGs, and the influence of environment on them can make an important contribution to informing decisions in 2020 and beyond. Here, we review previous assessments of interactions among SDGs, apply an influence matrix to assess pairwise interactions between all SDGs, and show how viewing these from the perspective of environment–human linkages can influence the outcome. Environment, and environment–human linkages, influence most interactions between SDGs. Our action-focused assessment enables decision makers to focus environmental management to have the greatest impacts and to identify opportunities to build on synergies and reduce trade-offs between particular SDGs. It may enable sectoral decision makers to seek support from environment managers for achieving their goals. We explore cross-cutting issues and the relevance and potential application of our approach in supporting decision making for progress to achieve the SDGs.

Protecting important sites is a key strategy for halting the loss of biodiversity. However, our understanding of the relationship between management inputs and biodiversity outcomes in protected areas (PAs) remains weak. Here, we examine biodiversity outcomes using species population trends in PAs derived from the Living Planet Database in relation to management data derived from the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) database for 217 population time‐series from 73 PAs. We found a positive relationship between our METT‐based scores for Capacity and Resources and changes in vertebrate abundance, consistent with the hypothesis that PAs require adequate resourcing to halt biodiversity loss. Additionally, PA age was negatively correlated with trends for the mammal subsets and PA size negatively correlated with population trends in the global subset. Our study highlights the paucity of appropriate data for rigorous testing of the role of management in maintaining species populations across multiple sites, and describes ways to improve our understanding of PA performance.