Protected Planet Report 2020

The Protect Planet Report 2020 edition provides the final report on the status of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11,
and looks to the future as the world prepares to adopt a new global targets for nature under the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

The Protected Planet Report 2020 finds that the international community has made major progress towards the global target on protected and conserved area coverage, but has fallen far short on its commitments on the quality of these areas.

The report finds great progress since 2010 with 22.5 million km2 (16.64%) of land and inland water ecosystems and 28.1 million km2 (7.74%) of coastal waters and the ocean

within documented protected and conserved areas, an increase of over 21 million km2 (42% of the current coverage) since 2010.

It is clear that coverage on land will considerably exceed the 17% target when data for all areas are made available, as many protected and conserved areas remain unreported.

Yet a third of key biodiversity areas lack any coverage, and less than 8% of land is both protected and connected.

The report also identifies crucial opportunities for further improving the protected and conserved area network under the next set of global nature targets.

https://www.unep.org/resources/protected-planet-report-2020

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Predicted future trends of the current biodiversity:

 

Current extinction rate in European freshwater gastropods greatly exceeds that of the late Cretaceous mass extinction

Thomas A. Neubauer et al.
Communications Earth & Environment, DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00167-x

“Comparing our reconstructions of diversification dynamics and extinction magnitude for the 5th mass extinction event with the predicted future trends of the current biodiversity gives deeply worrying prospects.  Projected extinction  rates  of  European freshwater gastropods are estimated to be approximately three orders of magnitudes higher than for the 5th mass extinction even”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00167-x.pdf

The data underlying this study are available at https://doi.org/10.22029/jlupub-9 and in Supplementary Data 12.

 

National Geographic  on Mass Extinctions:  
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mass-extinction