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Convention on Biological DiversityPlant Conservation Report Page 18TARGET 4:AT LEAST 10% OF EACH OF THE WORLD’S ECOLOGICALREGIONS EFFECTIVELY CONSERVEDIntroductionThe protection of ecological regions is oneof the principal means for the conservationof biological diversity. This target calls forthe identiication of each of the world’s ecologicalregions, and the conservation of at least 10% ofits area. This is particularly important as it treatsplant conservation within the context of theprotection of communities, rather than individualhabitats, sites or species.Target 4 is clearly related to Target 5; that of havingthe protection of 50% of the most important areasof plant diversity assured. The protection of plantdiversity through the conservation of ecologicalregions also provides an element of mainstreamingfor plant conservation, and a ready linkageto ecological planning and monitoring. Furthermore,achievementof Target 4 would bea substantial contributionto the 2010Biodiversity Target,“to achieve by 2010 asigniicant reductionof the current rate ofbiodiversity loss atthe global, regionaland national level asa contribution to povertyalleviation and tothe beneit of all lifeon Earth.”taxa by extending protection to habitats andecosystems within regions. A regional approachensures that habitats with important ecologicalfunctions such as grasslands, wetlands and othersare protected. It can also assist in the identiicationof overlooked ecosystems through gap analyses.ProgressAccording to the World Database on ProtectedAreas 25 , maintained by UNEP-WCMC, the currentestimate for coverage of the global network ofprotected areas is that at present it includes11.6% of the Earth’s land surface, totalling 19million square kilometres, within 106,926 areas.The degree to which protection is effective, andactually represents each ecological region, isuncertain.The planning requiredto identify andprotect ecological regionshas to be basedon objective classiication of the regions themselves,through well-established procedures usingboth abiotic and biotic factors that delineateecologically distinct regions. Protecting ecologicalregions also requires working with multiplejurisdictions and levels of government as well asthe appropriate management across ecologicalscales, as eco-region boundaries do not necessarilyfollow administrative or political boundaries.Effective protection of 10% of ecological regionswould be of direct assistance in protectingmigratory and dispersal routes of threatenedRegional processes such as Natura 2000, theHabitats Directive of the European Unionand the Emerald Network, provide goodframeworks for implementing this targetat national level in Europe. Some countrieshave set national targets, e.g. Canada, Chinaand Thailand, while Ireland and Netherlandsindicate having already achieved this targetat the national level. The achievement of thistarget is dependent upon countries being ableto identify and find resources with which to25 http://www.wdpa.orgSource: UNEP-WCMC, 2008.
Protected areas network in CanadaIn Canada, protection of representativeportions of ecological regions is an establishedpriority, and includes incorporation of nationaland global targets. The protected areas systemin Canada includes both terrestrial and marineprotected areas. The Federal Governmentadministers the formal system includingabout 3,500 areas, 800 of which are largerthan 1,000 ha. The national parks system inCanada is dedicated to the restoration andrecovery of natural habitats. Individual parksrange in size from 900 ha to almost 4,500,000ha. Together, federal, provincial and territorialgovernments have designated about 9% of thearea of Canada as “protected”. By ecoregion,the average varies from over 90% of someecoregions to none in others. Protectedareas include wilderness and conservationareas, forest and wildlife reserves, and parksdesignated through legislation at the federal,provincial and territorial levels. In addition toprotection through legislation, lands are beingconserved through measures that provide taxincentives for donating lands for conservationpurposes to authorized management agencies.The network of protected areas administeredby Environment Canada now totals over 11million hectares of terrestrial habitat, or anarea twice the size of the province of NovaScotia. The system is made up of three maincomponents: National Wildlife Areas (51sites), Migratory Bird Sanctuaries (92 sites) andMarine Wildlife Areas (1 proposed). MarineWildlife Areas and Migratory Bird Sanctuariesprotect approximately 1.5 million ha of aquatichabitats.as to how the 10% level of this target relates tothe conservation of either species-rich hotspotsor areas of high threat or endemism, as theseare not always correlated. Ensuring that allecological regions are represented withinprotected areas will require further researchand modelling in the face of climate change, inaddition to overcoming resource limitationsand potential or actual conflicts. Modelling,especially of climate change scenarios, maygenerate valuable understanding of the valueof this target in the future. An assessment ofthe ecological regions that are most at riskdue to current and projected climate changetrends might suggest that the conservation of10% of ecological regions could be too small athreshold to prevent further extinctions.Biodiversity in an urban environmentSingapore’s first green roof, the ‘Green Pavilion’in the Botany Centre of Singapore BotanicGardens.protect - or even acquire - land. As such, conflictscan arise between conservation and other landuse needs, and between conservation andeconomic development. Operationally, there isoften a lack of a nationally agreed frameworkincluding a lack of indicators for monitoringthe effectiveness of protection. Conflicts canbe made worse by a lack of compensationmechanisms. Many areas set aside for plantconservation are small in size (1,000-10,000ha), often representing remaining fragmentsthat, although valuable, may be inadequatefor maintaining large-scale processes. Thereare also evident gaps in coverage of existingprotected area networks.FutureThe risks posed by climate change increasethe importance of effective conservation ofecological regions. Currently there is uncertaintySingapore was once an island covered withdense natural vegetation, however rapidindustrialization and urbanization have almostcompletely eradicated the natural ecosystems.The Singapore Botanic Gardens has a smalltropical rainforest, of around six hectares insize, which is older than the gardens itself. TheBotanic Gardens’ rainforest and its bigger cousinat Bukit Timah Nature Reserve are located wellwithin the Singapore’s city limits. Singapore isone of the only two major cities with a tropicalrainforest within its city limits - the other is Riode Janeiro’s Tijuca Forest. Threatened species inSingapore cannot be managed just in protectedareas. They must be conserved in regional andneighbourhood parks in which both recreationand conservation are priority uses. Species thatare rare are propagated in the nurseries andplanted out in the appropriate natural sites aswell as in the parks and on roadsides.Plant Conservation ReportPage 19 Convention on Biological Diversity
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