Protected Planet

UNEP-WCMC's record of the world's protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, the World Database on Protected Areas, updated monthly from government and other submissions and downloadable from the site.

What is reusable: unknown sourceopen dataAPI unknownpartly open participation The database can be downloaded from the site and is built from submissions by governments, NGOs, landowners and communities; its terms of use were not read for this entry.

Protected Planet is the public face of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), a joint project of the UN Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature managed by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge. The site describes it as the most up to date and complete source of data on protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), updated monthly with submissions from governments, non-governmental organisations, landowners and communities, and downloadable from the site.

Beside the WDPA it holds the World Database on OECMs, a database of management-effectiveness assessments (GD-PAME), the IUCN Green List, and thematic pages on connectivity and equitable governance. The site publishes running global statistics; in October 2026 it counted 506,250 protected areas and 7,749 OECMs, with protected areas and OECMs together covering 18.69 per cent of land and inland waters and 10.04 per cent of the sea.

The database was established in 1981, with a mandate the site traces to a 1959 UN Economic and Social Council resolution calling for a list of national parks and equivalent reserves, and it is the record against which progress on the 30 by 30 target is officially measured.