Over the past two decades, there has been a growing global interest in understanding and demonstrating the effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) which collectively are referred to as protected and conserved areas (PCAs). The need to go beyond coverage targets and understand whether PCAs are delivering conservation outcomes was already recognized in the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11, which highlighted that PCAs must be “effectively and equitably managed” (CBD 2011). The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Target 3 reinforced this commitment, calling for at least 30% of the planet to be “effectively conserved and managed” by 2030, through systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (CBD 2022). More specifically, CBD defines effectiveness as the extent to which a particular measure has helped to bring about desired outcomes (CBD 2017). This also fits with the Oxford Languages dictionary definition of effectiveness as “successful in producing a desired or intended result.”
