For the last two decades, countries around the world have been in a frenzy to earmark large swaths of their lands and waters as protected areas to meet the ambitious “30 by 30” target that calls for 30% of Earth’s land and seas to be legally protected by 2030. Governments are expanding existing protected areas and setting up new ones to prevent deforestation, conserve biodiversity and reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. But how well are these protected areas working? That’s a question an international team of researchers explored in the context of 80 protected areas established between 2007 and 2014 across Southeast Asia. In a new study published in the journal Current Biology, they report that more than half of these protected areas failed to stop deforestation, resulting in a loss of 72,497 hectares (179,144 acres) of forests — an area twice as large as the U.S. city of Detroit. “In the last 15 years, protected areas expansion was the key conservation mechanism in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the world, but not all Southeast Asian countries have the financial abilities to build protected areas so fast,” says lead author Sreekar Rachakonda, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia, who was at the National University of Singapore during the study. “We wanted to see how these protected areas are faring after they were established.” The slopes of Mount Kitanglad and the Kitanglad mountain range, Philippines. A new study looking at 80 protected areas established in Southeast Asia…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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