Protected Areas are Not Preventing Human Encroachment, Study Shows

November 29th, 2019

By Nikki Harper

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

Currently, one sixth of the globe’s land now falls within a designated protected area [1], in a bid to protect habitats, preserve biodiversity and maintain carbon sequestering vegetation. Sounds like a good thing, right? And it is. The world is on course to meet Target 11 [2], a target set by the multilateral treaty body the Convention on Biological Diversity – Target 11 specifies that by 2020, at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of marine and coastal areas should be protected. Excellent.

Except when it’s considerably less excellent than you might think.

New research by the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute has found that the designation of protected areas is widely failing to prevent human encroachment into these areas [1].

The study, the largest of its kind ever undertaken, examined the level of human encroachment in 12, 315 protected areas around the world, between 1995 and 2010. Researchers used night-time satellite imagery to look for man-made lights, and day-time imagery to view agriculture. Every pixel of satellite imagery (roughly 64km2) was matched to another local pixel of similar soil and elevation but which was not in a protected area, so that scientists could compare human encroachment in protected areas versus non-protected [3].

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