Consistency in conservation Marine protected areas (MPAs) are now well established globally as tools for conservation, for enhancing marine biodiversity, and for promoting sustainable fisheries. That said, which regions are labeled as MPAs varies substantially, from those that full protect marine species and prohibit human extraction to those that permit everything from intensive fishing to mining. This inconsistency can in some cases inhibit both conservation and quantifying the proportion of the marine environment that is truly protected. Grorud-Colvert et al . review the consistency of MPAs and propose a framework by which levels of protection can be evaluated and improved. —SNV

The Strategic

No abstract

Understanding the successes and failures of management of protected areas is vital for the conservation of global biodiversity. The Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) is a simple, questionnaire-based approach for assessing protected area management effectiveness (PAME). Since it was developed in 1999, it has become the most widely applied PAME tool, used in at least 127 countries worldwide. This paper reviews the development of the METT and how it has been implemented and adapted. A combination of literature review on implementation and implementation experience from the original authors and key users of the METT confirms that the METT is a relatively quick and simple way of collecting information about the status and trends of management in protected areas, and provides information to help drive management improvements. As such it is suitable for protected area managers, national protected area agencies, donors, and NGOs aiming to improve area management, and as a component of national reporting to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The paper examines issues related to METT implementation and concludes with 12 recommendations, from using the METT to verification of results, which together help ensure the tool is implemented in the most effective way and improves the credibility of PAME assessments.

Over the past decades, a number of national policies and international conventions have been implemented to promote the expansion of the world’s protected area network, leading to a diversification of protected area strategies, types and designations. As a result, many areas are protected by more than one convention, legal instrument, or other effective means which may result in a lack of clarity around the governance and management regimes of particular locations. We assess the degree to which different designations overlap at global, regional and national levels to understand the extent of this phenomenon at different scales. We then compare the distribution and coverage of these multi-designated areas in the terrestrial and marine realms at the global level and among different regions, and we present the percentage of each county’s protected area extent that is under more than one designation. Our findings show that almost a quarter of the world’s protected area network is protected through more than one designation. In fact, we have documented up to eight overlapping designations. These overlaps in protected area designations occur in every region of the world, both in the terrestrial and marine realms, but are more common in the terrestrial realm and in some regions, notably Europe. In the terrestrial realm, the most common overlap is between one national and one international designation. In the marine realm, the most common overlap is between any two national designations. Multi-designations are therefore a widespread phenomenon but its implications are not well understood. This analysis identifies, for the first time, multi-designated areas across all designation types. This is a key step to understand how these areas are managed and governed to then move towards integrated and collaborative approaches that consider the different management and conservation objectives of each designation.