Protected areas

This dataset on protected areas provides country-level protected area coverage for terrestrial, marine and coastal areas using the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). It provides a disaggregation of protected area total by IUCN management categories to answer two key questions:

• How extensive are protected areas?
• What management objectives are pursued via designated IUCN management categories?

Data sources

• Protected areas: UNEP-WCMC World Database on Protected Areas January 2023 release

UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2023), Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) January 2023, Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Available at: http://www.protectedplanet.net/.

• Boundaries: National terrestrial boundaries are calculated based on (i) country data, i.e. OECD territorial level 1 or TL1 boundary data based on data received from National Statistical Offices, or when unavailable, (ii) a corresponding level using the FAO Global Administrative Unit Layer (GAUL) 2015 level 0 political boundary data. National marine boundaries are based on a country's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Data for marine EEZ boundaries is based on the VLIZ Exclusive Economic Zones, v11 (2019). Countries with a coastline are further intersected by a 1 km or 10 km coastline buffer to permit the calculation of the coastal indicators provided in this dataset.

FAO (2015), The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL), implemented by FAO within the CountrySTAT and Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) projects. Available at fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home.

Flanders Marine Institute (2019), Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase, version 11. Available at marineregions.org/doi.org/10.14284/242.

IUCN management objective disaggregation

IUCN management categories aim to describe and categorise the different management approaches in individual protected areas. IUCN management category definitions are described in more detail here.

• Erased against precedent categories treats the IUCN categories as a hierarchy and reports the area protected under each designation excluding any area which is already designated at a precedent category in the hierarchy. The order of precedence used is Ia>Ib>II>III>IV>V>VI>No category. The total protected area is equal to the sum of the disaggregated areas.
• Total for category is the total area protected under that IUCN management designation. Note that because overlaps among protected areas are relatively common, the total protected area for a country is typically less than the sum of the disaggregated areas. For some countries, the total protected area can exceed 100% because of overlapping areas being counted multiple times.

Some countries have some protected areas recorded as points with a reported area. This point data is more uncertain than protected areas reported as polygons because overlaps cannot be identified or resolved. For this reason the total for countries is provided with and without the inclusion of the total reported area of protected areas recorded as points. The reported area of protected areas recorded as points can (individually or cumulatively) exceed the reference area used to calculate these indicators so coverages of greater than 100% can be reported.

Data revisions

Protected area indicators were updated in January / February 2023 to include data up to the year 2022.

Limitations

Protected areas are not necessarily sited optimally with respect to biodiversity conservation objectives.

• The indicator presented here does not provide any indication of whether protected areas are effectively managed or enforced.
• In practice, some of the No Category and the internationally and regionally designated protected areas meet the definition of a specific IUCN category (e.g. Natura 2000 sites arguably meet the definition of IUCN cat. IV); however, they are not currently recorded as such in the WDPA database and therefore are included under No IUCN category
• Not all protected areas have a designation date recorded. When there is no designation date the protected area is deemed to have always existed, therefore historical totals maybe be overestimated. Protected areas for a country can be inspected on a site-by-site basis on Protected Planet which can be useful to assess the data completeness for this attribute field and others.
• Differences between different sources of protected area coverage information arise from several issues including the definitions of terrestrial, coastal, and marine areas; the country baselines used; the definition of a country (e.g. which overseas territories are included); areal calculation technique used; how protected areas recorded as points are treated; time lag between national or regional data and updates to the WDPA; uncertainty about whether a particular type of protected area designation meets the definition of a protected area; and to which of the IUCN categories a protected area belongs. The WDPA also includes data from non-governmental data providers which may not be included in national databases.

Other notes

• The OECD aggregate includes all members as of January and includes 'metropolitan' member country areas only, i.e. it does not include overseas territories or affiliates.
• All aggregate groups (OECD total, EU27, G20 etc.) are geographically weighted (i.e. calculated based on the total land/EEZ area of the aggregate group).
• Türkiye chooses to restrict data on protected areas and it is therefore not publicly available on the WDPA website.
• Some marine areas are shared between countries in joint regimes or there are unresolved overlapping claims to an area. In these cases, the entire relevant area (and protected areas therein) are attributed to all countries involved. Aggregate results (e.g. OECD total) are calculated such that these areas are only counted once - and therefore may not match the sum of the reported values of their constituent countries.
• When defining geographical coverage, the rule applied is that if an affiliated country/territory has its own ISO 3166-1 code then it is not included in the 'parent' code. The exception is Clipperton Island (France) which has been given the code CPT even though it does not have an individual official ISO 3166-1 entry. For AUS, DNK, GBR, FRA, NLD, NOR, NZD and USA additional results are provided that include affiliated countries or territories overseas.
• The analysis is performed using a raster representation of protected areas at a standard resolution of 500 m. This was necessary to handle increasing data volumes and complexity. For countries and EEZ areas below 1,000 sq km, a spatial resolution of 50 m was applied, while for countries and EEZ areas above 8 million sq km, a spatial resolution of 1 km was applied. The use of rasters to represent the data imply that the processing resolution could sometimes cause disparities with estimates produced using other calculation methods.

Further information

A more complete description of the method to develop the protected area indicators can be found here.