Progress
On track or target met
On track or target met

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Headline data

Coverage of protected areas in relation to marine areas
Year Value Units
2024 100 %

Geographical Area:

Unit of Measurement:

Footnote:

Methodological sheet of the indicator available for the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.

Available indicator

Coverage of protected areas in relation to marine areas
Definition

Percentage of important sites for marine biodiversity (those that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity) that are covered by protected areas
Theoretical formula \[PKBA_{mar}^{t} = \frac{APKBA_{mar}^{t}}{KBA_{mar}^{t}} \cdot 100\]

where:

$APKBA_{mar}^{t} =$ area of ​​important sites for marine biodiversity covered by protected areas in year $t$

$KBA_{mar} =$ surface area of ​​important sites for marine biodiversity in year $t$
Frequency

Irregular / Aperiodic
Data last updated 2025/04/22
Metadata last updated 2025/06/06

This section provides more information about the United Nations indicator or the European Union Sustainable Development Indicator, such as its rationale, international results, metadata, and other relevant statistics.

Rationale

The safeguard of important sites is vital for stemming the decline in biodiversity and ensuring long term and sustainable use of marine natural resources. The establishment of protected areas is an important mechanism for achieving this aim, and this indicator serves as a means of measuring progress toward the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of marine ecosystems and their services, in line with obligations under international agreements.

This indicator adds meaningful information to, complements and builds from traditionally reported simple statistics of marine area covered by protected areas, computed by dividing the total protected area within a country by the total territorial area of the country and multiplying by 100 (e.g., Chape et al. 2005). Such percentage area coverage statistics do not recognise the extreme variation of biodiversity importance over space (Rodrigues et al. 2004), and so risk generating perverse outcomes through the protection of areas which are large at the expense of those which require protection.

Source: United Nations Statistics Division
International results

Average proportion of Marine Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) covered by protected areas (%) ER_MRN_MPA UNSTATS
Link to UN metadata

Metadata 14-5-1.pdf
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