Protected Area Dashboard

This Protected Area (PA) Dashboard of the BIOPAMA Reference Information System (RIS) provides easy access to essential information on the protected areas and protected area systems in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

The principal source for the protected area information is the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA), a global information system managed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, using data from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) managed by UNEP-WCMC.

The dashboard supports the ACP Secretariat, BIOPAMA Regional Observatories, national ministries and agencies, PA managers and staff, and others (e.g. donors and NGOs).

Learn how this module works and find the full documentation in the Learn & Explore section.

Terrestrial Protected Areas (km²)

Marine Protected Areas (km²)

Total Area Protected (km²)

Terrestial Protected Areas

Marine Protected Areas

Coastal Protected Areas

Management Categories

IUCN protected area management categories classify protected areas according to their management objectives. The categories are recognised by international bodies such as the United Nations and by many national governments as the global standard for defining and recording protected areas and as such are increasingly being incorporated into government legislation. If you want to know more please visit https://www.iucn.org/theme/protected-areas/about/protected-area-categories.

Governance Types

The IUCN Governance Types classify protected areas according to who holds authority, responsibility, and accountability for them. Protected areas exist under the authority of diverse governance actors, including indigenous peoples, local communities, private actors, governments, and combinations of these.

Designations

The Designation attribute of the WDPA is used to report particular designations (i.e. National Park).

Protection level statistics as of Apr 2025
The protected area coverage at the country (GAUL) and region levels is calculated every month using open-source software (QGis) and scripts (Python) following the procedure available at https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/resources/calculating-protected-area-coverage
The code is available at: https://github.com/BIOPAMA/protection_analyst

APIs:
If you want to reuse our data please visit https://api.biopama.org/protection_level

Citation:

EC-JRC (2025). BIOPAMA RIS [On-line], Protection level statistics as of Apr 2025. Available at: rris.biopama.org

Disclaimer:

These statistics might differ from those reported officially by countries or by other institutions due to difference in methodologies, software and datasets used to assess protected area coverage and differences in the base maps used to measure terrestrial and marine area of a country or territory.

Protected Area Dashboard

ACP Protected Area Dashboard

ACP Total Coverage

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