For centuries, protected areas of many kinds have played a fundamental role within the world's landscapes and seascapes. They are essential for the conservation of species and ecosystems, and also provide benefits for people. However, protected areas are not isolated entities, their ability to deliver positive outcomes is affected by their surroundings, and they can only work if they are governed and managed as part of the wider landscape, integrated into development strategies and considered across all sectors of society.

The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), a joint effort between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is the only globally authoritative database on marine and terrestrial protected areas of the world. It is compiled and managed by UNEP-WCMC in collaboration with IUCN.

Map Author: Maria Renee Horn
Publication Date: June 2019
Data: World Database on Protected Areas & IUCN Protected Area Categories

Protected area spatial data is collected in the form of boundary (polygon) wherever it is available, or as a single latitude and longitude coordinate (point) data where boundary data is not available. Boundary data for an individual protected area may be unavailable for a number of reasons such as lack of capacity to map protected areas or confidentiality issues preventing public dissemination of data.

It is important that both data types are used in the analysis as far as possible, point datasets accounted for 9% of all the records in the WDPA in January 2016, excluding them for any analysis will likely underestimate the extent of protected areas globally.

The WDPA stores the IUCN Protected Area Management Categories for each of the protected areas where these categories are reported. The IUCN category is provided to the WDPA as part of the dataset, and is not assigned by the WDPA Team. There are many sites (both polygons and points) for which an IUCN mangement category have not been reported, have not been assigned, or are not applicable. Because the IUCN management objectives, does not relate to a given designation (e.g. National Park), but to its management objectives, and therefore categories have not been reported may only mean that the country has not conducted a formal process to assign the categories to their protected area network, not that these protected areas are not well managed or don’t have management objectives in place.

Data: World Database on Protected Areas User Manual

IUCN protected area management categories classify protected areas according to their management objectives:

Ia - Strict Nature Reserve
Ib - Wilderness Area
II - National Park
III - National Monument or Feature
IV - Habitat/Species Management Area
V - Protected Landscape/Seascape
VI - Protected Area With Sustainable Use Of Natural Resources
Not Reported
Not Applicable
Not Assigned

Data: IUCN Protected Area Categories