Identifying opportunities for transboundary conservation in Africa

Abstract

The conservation of natural and cultural resources shared between countries is a significant challenge that can be addressed through the establishment of transboundary conservation areas (TBCAs). TBCAs enable countries to harmonize cross-border governance and management, increase protected area (PA) coverage, and strengthen relationships between neighbouring countries and communities. In Africa, many ecosystems and species ranges span multiple countries, making TBCAs a crucial tool for biodiversity conservation. However, there is a lack of research on where TBCAs can be established or need to be established. To address this gap, we conducted a study to identify opportunities for establishing TBCAs in Africa. We first compiled an up-to-date list of existing TBCAs on the continent. Then, we identified potential TBCAs by identifying protected areas next to country borders that are adjacent to other protected areas in a neighbouring country. We also evaluated the functional connectivity between these PA pairs and prioritized potential TBCAs based on size, connectivity, and ease of establishment. We identified 27 existing TBCAs and 8,481 potential TBCAs in Africa composed of various possible combinations of 2,326 individual PAs. Our results provide a baseline of existing TBCAs and offer a better understanding of where transboundary conservation might be established or strengthened. We also highlight areas where future transboundary conservation efforts could safeguard PA connectivity. This information can guide policy and decision-making processes towards promoting conservation and sustainable use of natural and cultural resources shared between countries in Africa.

Proximity and size of protected areas in Asian borderlands enable transboundary conservation

“…To effectively address transboundary conservation in Asia, it is a priority for future studies to investigate further the functional connectivity between protected areas across borders, particularly for species with transboundary ranges. This targeted research (such as those of Kamath et al (2023) carried out for Africa) will provide important insights in the quest to identify the specific protected areas that require attention and conservation interventions.…”

Transboundary Central African Protected Area Complexes Demonstrate Varied Effectiveness in Reducing Predicted Risk of Deforestation Attributed to Small-Scale Agriculture

“…An additional complication is the transboundary context, where strictness of enforcement or resource-use restriction may be uneven between countries. In these cases, collaborative transboundary protected area management presents both an opportunity and a challenge [21,32,57,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80].…”

“…We contributed an additional dimension to this literature via our focus on transboundary protected areas, capturing continuous forests overlapping international boundaries. The effectiveness of transboundary protected areas for reducing forest loss, as compared to non-transboundary protected areas, has great potential but is still under-studied in the literature [32,76,[78][79][80]. Further, the potential influence of spatial arrangement of protected area categories within the same transboundary protected area complex is also understudied.…”

“…Across and within Central African countries, different protection categories receive varying levels of enforcement and prioritization from conservation entities and vary in their fundamental objectives. However, transboundary-protected area complexes often feature groupings of these mixed-protection categories and resource-use allowances [73,74,76], as is the case for both BUPAC and STPAC. In the case of STPAC, forest reserves such as the Dzanga-Sangha Special Dense Forest Reserve were intentionally established as a buffer area to ensure the protection of core forest and wildlife habitat in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park and Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park [74].…”

“…These two Central African protected area complexes were selected for this study due to their transboundary locations and contiguous or adjacent inclusion of mixed-protected area categories within the same complex, constituting transboundary conservation landscapes [76]. BUPAC is under-studied [94], while new analyses for STPAC are also enabled by increasing the access, availability, and quality of EO data [75].…”