Protected areas helping achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

How can protected areas help meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Although they were only adopted in 2015, the United Nations’ seventeen SDGs already play major roles in setting national development priorities. Protected areas, far from only being important for nature conservation, are increasingly recognised as key tools in achieving a number of these goals. Aligning with the start of the UN General Assembly, we explore the various links between protected areas and several SDGs.

The relationship between protected areas and SDGs is clearest in SDGs 14 and 15: Life below Water and Life on Land. SDG 14 includes a target of 10% ocean protection and SDG 15 refers to meeting “obligations under international agreements”. These are clear references to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) 2020 target of 17% terrestrial and 10% marine coverage by protected areas.

However, these linkages are only part of the story. Protected areas are relevant to many important issues, from food security to climate change mitigation, due to their role in maintaining and restoring ecosystem services.

Watersheds in natural ecosystems, especially forests and wetlands, produce cleaner, purer water than those from agricultural or industrial areas. Hundreds of cities, from New York to Melbourne, draw drinking water from protected areas. Some municipalities pay to support the management of protected areas because they provide a cost-effective water supply; others remain virtually unaware that their water comes from a protected area. In some ecosystems, particularly tropical mountain cloud forest and paramos vegetation of the South American Andes, the net amount of water increases because moisture settles on leaves and flows into the catchment. In Colombia, Bogota draws 80 per cent of its drinking water from Chingaza National Park. Such benefits contribute directly to SDG 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, which aims to achieve “universal access to safe and affordable drinking water” and “protect and restore water-related ecosystems”.

Paramos vegetation near Bogota, Colombia.

Food security is addressed by SDG 2, Zero Hunger, which includes the ambition to “maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species”. The wild ancestors or close relatives of domesticated crops, known as crop wild relatives, are useful for crop breeding, a billion dollar industry that is becoming more vital as climate change puts existing varieties under stress. Protected areas maintain crop wild relatives in situ. Some protected areas are set up explicitly to do just that, examples of which can be seen in Mauritius, South Africa and Zambia. Similarly, many marine and freshwater protected areas support food security for fishing communities by boosting populations of fish, which spill over into areas where fisherfolk operate. In many cases, such protected areas are established by communities themselves in order to ensure food security for future generations.

SDG 3 on Good Health and Well-Being includes a target to “reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being”. The Healthy Parks Healthy People movement recognises the importance of resting and exercising in natural environments to address “diseases of civilisation” ranging from obesity and heart problems through to depression and substance abuse. Protected areas provide access to natural environments and the associated human health and wellbeing benefits. The “green gym” concept has developed as a result, whereby protected areas provide safe and pleasant places for people to exercise. Consistent improvements to human mental health are also correlated to spending more time in natural environments.

A common thread across conservation and development challenges is the impacts of climate change, which has the potential to undermine the sustainable development agenda. SDG 13, Climate Action, seeks to address this. Given the recognition that climate change impacts already exist and are predicted to increase, the first target aims to “strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters” around the world. Protected areas store and sequester a disproportionate amount of the carbon locked in natural ecosystems.

Carbon storage in a boreal forest.

In addition, protected areas maintain many ecosystem services needed to adapt to climate change, such as the natural ecosystems that buffer human settlements against the worst effects of natural disasters. Their role as natural solutions to climate change was highlighted by 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries in a joint statement to the Paris Climate Change Conference in 2015.

Latin American and Caribbean representatives present the REDPARQUES Declaration at the Paris Climate Change Conference, 2015, drawing attention to the vital role of protected areas in addressing climate change.

A key challenge of managing ecosystem services is that they are taken for granted until they disappear. It is important to ensure not only that protected areas play a central role in delivering the SDGs, but that this role is recognised by decision-makers, leading to a strengthened and resilient protected area network around the world.

Nigel Dudley

Equilibrium Research

This story is part of a series of quarterly blog posts published in complement to the Live Protected Planet report, which you are invited to explore at https://livereport.protectedplanet.net/