title: Measuring impact of protected area management interventions: current and future use of the Global Database of Protected Area Management Effectiveness.
abstract: Protected areas (PAs) are at the forefront of conservation efforts, and yet despite considerable progress towards the global target of having 17% of the world's land area within protected areas by 2020, biodiversity continues to decline. The discrepancy between increasing PA coverage and negative biodiversity trends has resulted in renewed efforts to enhance PA effectiveness. The global conservation community has conducted thousands of assessments of protected area management effectiveness (PAME), and interest in the use of these data to help measure the conservation impact of PA management interventions is high. Here, we summarize the status of PAME assessment, review the published evidence for a link between PAME assessment results and the conservation impacts of PAs, and discuss the limitations and future use of PAME data in measuring the impact of PA management interventions on conservation outcomes. We conclude that PAME data, while designed as a tool for local adaptive management, may also help to provide insights into the impact of PA management interventions from the local-to-global scale. However, the subjective and ordinal characteristics of the data present significant limitations for their application in rigorous scientific impact evaluations, a problem that should be recognized and mitigated where possible.
authors.affiliation: Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Coad
authors.affiliation: University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Queensland, Australia International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Protected Areas Programme (IUCN-WCPA), Rue Mauverney 28, 1196, Gland, Switzerland Protected Area Solutions, 38 Foothill Place, The Gap, QLD 4061, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Fiona
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Leverington
authors.affiliation: Protected Area Solutions, 38 Foothill Place, The Gap, QLD 4061, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Kathryn
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Knights
authors.affiliation: Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Geldmann
authors.affiliation: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK.
authors.forename: April
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Eassom
authors.affiliation: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK val.kapos@unep-wcmc.org.
authors.forename: Valerie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kapos
authors.affiliation: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK.
authors.forename: Naomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kingston
authors.affiliation: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK.
authors.forename: Marcelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de Lima
authors.affiliation: Protected Area Solutions, 38 Foothill Place, The Gap, QLD 4061, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Camilo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zamora
authors.affiliation: Protected Area Solutions, 38 Foothill Place, The Gap, QLD 4061, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Ivon
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Cuardros
authors.affiliation: International Forestry Resources and Institutions, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041, USA.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nolte
authors.affiliation: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Neil D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Burgess
authors.affiliation: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Queensland, Australia International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Protected Areas Programme (IUCN-WCPA), Rue Mauverney 28, 1196, Gland, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hockings
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017753:Ecosystem
keywords: biodiversity; biodiversity targets; conservation outcomes; convention on biological diversity (CBD); impact assessment