Quality control criteria are applied to ensure consistency and comparability of the data in the WDPA. New data are validated at UNEP-WCMC through a number of tools and translated into the standard data structure of the WDPA. Discrepancies between the data in the WDPA and new data are minimised by provision of a manual (UNEP-WCMC 2019) and resolved in communication with data providers. Similar processes apply for the incorporation of data into the WDKBA (BirdLife International 2019).
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. A number of initiatives are underway to address this limitation. Most notably, numerous mechanisms have been developed for assessment of protected area management, which can be synthesised into an indicator (Leverington et al. 2010). This is used by the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership as a complementary indicator of progress towards Aichi Biodiversity Target 11
(http://www.bipindicators.net/pamanagement). However, there may be little relationship between these measures and protected area outcomes (Nolte & Agrawal 2013). More recently, approaches to “green listing” have started to be developed, to incorporate both management effectiveness and the outcomes of protected areas, and these are likely to become progressively important as they are tested and applied more broadly.
Data and knowledge gaps can arise due to difficulties in determining whether a site conforms to the IUCN definition of a protected area or the CBD definition of an OECM. However, given that both are incorporated into the indicator, misclassifications (as one or the other) do not impact the calculated indicator value.
Regarding important sites, the biggest limitation is that site identification to date has focused mainly on specific subsets of biodiversity, for example birds (for Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas) and highly threatened species (for Alliance for Zero Extinction sites). While Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas have been documented to be good surrogates for biodiversity more generally (Brooks et al. 2001, Pain et al. 2005), the application of the unified standard for identification of KBA sites (IUCN 2016) across different levels of biodiversity (genes, species, ecosystems) and different taxonomic groups remains a high priority, building from efforts to date (Eken et al. 2004, Knight et al. 2007, Langhammer et al. 2007, Foster et al. 2012). Birds now comprise less than 50% of the species for which KBAs have been identified, and as KBA identification for other taxa and elements of biodiversity proceeds, such bias will become a less important consideration in the future.
KBA identification has been validated for a number of countries and regions where comprehensive biodiversity data allow formal calculation of the site importance (or “irreplaceability”) using systematic conservation planning techniques (Di Marco et al. 2016, Montesino Pouzols et al. 2014).
Future developments of the indicator will include: a) expansion of the taxonomic coverage of mountain KBAs through application of the KBA standard (IUCN 2016) to a wide variety of mountain vertebrates, invertebrates, plants and ecosystem type; b) improvements in the data on protected areas by continuing to increase the proportion of sites with documented dates of designation and with digitised boundary polygons (rather than coordinates); and c) increased documentation of Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures in the World Database of OECMs.
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