PRESSURE · Effectiveness of Terrestrial Protected Areas in Reducing Human Pressure
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-09-01 → 2019-08-31
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Effectiveness of Terrestrial Protected Areas in Reducing Human Pressure
Human impacts on nature have led to massive biodiversity declines rivaled only by five previous events in the 3.8 billion years life has existed. To avert this human pressure, protected areas have been suggested as one of the most important tools to protect biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. As a response the international community has committed to protecting 17% of terrestrial areas and inland waters by 2020 (i.e. Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020). Thus, understanding how protected areas can reduce human pressure to better help protect the worlds biodiversity is one of the most pressing questions in conservation science. In this project has aimed to advance our understanding of the effectiveness of terrestrial protected areas in reducing human pressure and improve our current knowledge on how to measure human pressure through combining large-scale global dataset on change in human pressure and site-specific data on the quality of management from over 2,000 protected areas together with the World database on Protected Areas. These already published open-access data sources will allow for a unique look into the performance of protected areas by combining data across actions and activities that sets protected areas apart from non-protected land with data on outcomes of relevance for measuring whether protected areas contribute positively to halting the loss of biodiversity. Importantly, the project has taken a counterfactual approach – comparing protected areas to areas not protected but similar in environmental and socio-economic factors to increase the attribution of change in pressure to the intervention of protection and not the context of the protected area. The results of this project are of relevance to the scientific community in terms of advancing our understanding of what contributes to protected area effectiveness as well as to the wider community especially in guiding the discussion for new and ambitious post-2020 targets for biodiversity under the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Human impacts on nature have led to massive biodiversity declines. Protected areas (PAs) have been suggested as one of the most important tools to reduce human pressure and protect biodiversity. In this project I will advance our understanding of the effectiveness of terrestrial PAs in reducing human pressure and improve current knowledge on how to measure human pressure, by specifically addressing three objectives: 1) To understand how management quality affects PAs ability to reduce human pressure, 2) To reconciling remote sensed maps of human pressure with field observation of the impact of human threats, and 3) To improve existing maps of human pressure by including data of key threats to biodiversity (e.g. natural resource use and invasive species). The foundation of the project will be the Temporal Human Pressure Index (e.g. a temporal Human Footprint), the World Database of Protected Areas, and a global database on Management. The three objectives will apply different state-of-the-art statistical approaches including propensity matching and general linear mixed effects models to achieve these ambitious objectives. The project is expected to lead to three high impact peer-reviewed papers as well as min two popular science papers, and one policy brief. The project will help me develop new data and skills instrumental to achieving my career goals in academia after the fellowship. I will be hosted in the conservation group at the University of Cambridge, under supervision of Professor Andrew Balmford who is one of the world’s leading conservation scientist and an expert on how to understand human pressure in relation to biodiversity. Professor Neil Burgess will be my supervisor while seconded at WCMC. He is a world leading expert on management effectiveness and has years of experience working on pressure and PAs. This proposal represents a frontier in conservation science and is of very high relevance to the EU and global conservation policy.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE · CAMBRIDGECoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union