This indicator, Coverage by protected areas of important sites for mountain biodiversity, shows temporal trends in the mean percentage of each important site for mountain biodiversity (i.e., those that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity) that is covered by designated protected areas.

This indicator adds meaningful information to, complements and builds from traditionally reported simple statistics of mountain area covered by protected areas, computed by dividing the total protected area in mountains within a country by the total territorial area in mountains of the country and multiplying by 100 (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.

Related Aichi Targets