Inland surface waters in protected areas globally: Current coverage and 30-year trends

Abstract

Inland waters are unique ecosystems offering services and habitat resources upon which many species depend. Despite the importance of, and threats to, inland water, global assessments of protected area (PA) coverage and trends have focused on land habitats or have assessed land and inland waters together. We here provide the first assessment of the level of protection of inland open surface waters and their trends (1984–2015) within PAs for all countries, using a globally consistent, high-resolution (30 m) and validated dataset on permanent and seasonal surface waters based on Landsat images. Globally, 15% of inland surface waters are covered by PAs with mapped boundaries. Estimated inland water protection increases to 16.4% if PAs with reported area but delineated only as points are included as circular buffers. These coverage estimates slightly exceed the comparable figure for land but fall below the 17% goal of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11 for 2020. Protection levels are very uneven across countries, half of which do not yet meet the 17% target. The lowest coverage of surface water by PAs (<5%) was found in Africa and in parts of Asia. There was a global trend of permanent water losses and seasonal water gains within PAs, concomitant with an increase of both water types outside PAs. In 38% of countries, PAs lost over 5% of permanent water. Global protection targets for inland waters may well be met by 2020, but much stronger efforts are required to ensure their effective conservation, which will depend not only on sound PA governance and management but also on the sustainable use of water resources outside PAs. Given the pressures on water in a rapidly changing world, integrated management planning of water resources involving multiple sectors and entire basins is therefore necessary.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and environmental sustainability: race against time

“…World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (2014) reported a decline in population of freshwater species by 76% between 1970 and 2010 which escalated to 83% between 1970 and 2014 (World Wide Fund for Nature 2018). Similarly, global inland wetlands have reduced by up to 71% and of them 89% are not secured (Bastin et al 2019). Ecosystem services provided by water bodies cannot be fully assessed in terms of economics and capital gains as they play so many important roles in maintaining the ecological and climate balance on earth.…”

No lake left behind: How well do U.S. protected areas meet lake conservation targets?

“…Recent global estimates of freshwater representation in protected areas range from 15% to 20.7% of waterbodies (Juffe‐Bignoli et al ; Bastin et al ), suggesting that existing protected areas may meet the CBD target. However, defining a protected waterbody is not straightforward and may be affecting these estimates.…”

“…However, defining a protected waterbody is not straightforward and may be affecting these estimates. Many past studies consider a waterbody protected if it is within a protected area boundary (Juffe‐Bignoli et al ; Bastin et al ). However, because waterbodies are a direct reflection of their surrounding landscapes (Hynes ; Kratz et al ), a better definition of protection would include both a waterbody and its catchment.…”

Habitat network topology influences the importance of ecological traps in metapopulations

“…Land‐use and human activities threaten habitat quality and amount, especially wetlands (Lehtinen et al 1999, Sievers et al 2018 a , Bastin et al 2019). For example, chemical contamination is a serious threat to wetland communities via direct toxicological effects or by altering the structure of the ecosystem (Provete et al 2014, Stapanian et al 2015).…”