Brazil accounts for nearly three-quarters of land protected in conservation areas established since 2003, according to a new study published in the Biological Conservation.
The study, summarized at World governments to miss goal protecting 10 percent of every ecoregion by next year, shows that the rest of the world is making slower progress than Brazil in establishing new protected areas.
Overall Brazil set aside 523,592 square kilometers of protected areas between 2003 and 2009—an ara larger than Thailand—of which 295,718 sq km (56 percent) had a formal IUCN category. The vast majority of new protected areas in Brazil were established in the Amazon. Perhaps as a result of this effort, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen by more than half since peaking in 2004.
Jenkins, C.N., Joppa, L. Expansion of the global terrestrial protected area system. Biol. Conserv. (2009), doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.04.016
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World governments to miss goal protecting 10 percent of every ecoregion by next year
(06/01/2009) It is unlikely that world government will keep their pledge to protect 10 percent of every ecological region by 2010, according to a new study published in Biological Conservation. This goal is just one of many agreed upon by world governments through the Convention on Biological Diversity. With less than a year to the goal’s deadline, the study found that half of the world’s ecoregions are currently below the 10 percent threshold.
