Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 9;11(1):23760. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03188-w.
Protected areas aim to conserve nature, ecosystem services, and cultural values; however, they have variable success in doing so under high development pressure. Southeast Asian protected areas faced the highest level of human pressure at the turn of the twenty-first century. To estimate their effectiveness in conserving forest cover and forest carbon stocks for 2000-2018, we used statistical matching methods to control for the non-random location of protected areas, to compare protection against a matched counterfactual. We found Southeast Asian protected areas had three times less forest cover loss than similar landscapes without protection. Protected areas that had completed management reporting using the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) conserved significantly more forest cover and forest carbon stocks than those that had not. Management scores were positively associated with the level of carbon emissions avoided, but not the level of forest cover loss avoided. Our study is the first to find that METT scores could predict the level of carbon emissions avoided in protected areas. Given that only 11% of protected areas in Southeast Asia had completed METT surveys, our results illustrate the need to scale-up protected area management effectiveness reporting programs to improve their effectiveness for conserving forests, and for storing and sequestering carbon.
保护区旨在保护自然、生态系统服务和文化价值；然而，在面临高度发展压力的情况下，它们的保护效果存在差异。21 世纪之交，东南亚保护区面临着人类压力的最高水平。为了评估其在保护 2000-2018 年森林覆盖和森林碳储量方面的有效性，我们使用统计匹配方法来控制保护区的非随机位置，以保护区与匹配的反事实进行比较。我们发现，与没有保护的相似景观相比，东南亚保护区的森林覆盖损失减少了三分之二。使用管理效果跟踪工具（METT）完成管理报告的保护区比未完成报告的保护区保护了更多的森林覆盖和森林碳储量。管理得分与避免的碳排放量水平呈正相关，但与避免的森林覆盖损失水平无关。我们的研究首次发现，METT 得分可以预测保护区避免的碳排放量水平。鉴于东南亚只有 11%的保护区完成了 METT 调查，我们的结果表明需要扩大保护区管理效果报告计划，以提高其保护森林、储存和封存碳的效果。
