On Monday, The European Environment Agency published an overview of European protected areas, which at the moment cover one fifth of the EEA member countries’ territory. At a first glance, the report seems to provide a very useful reference manual about how different national and European schemes come together to form a network of areas subject to various policy and management schemes.

Protected Areas in Europe couples nicely with Protected Planet Report 2012, which was published by the IUCN and UNEP-WCMC in September. Protected Planet Report goes into measuring progress towards the UN Convention on Biological Diversity targets at a global level.                    

Carlos Romão, Johnny Reker, Dominique Richard, Lawrence Jones‑Walters et al. (2012) Protected areas in Europe – an overview. EEA Report No 5/2012, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Bastian Bertzky, Colleen Corrigan, James Kemsey, Siobhan Kenney, Corinna Ravilious, Charles Besançon and Neil Burgess (2012) Protected Planet Report 2012: Tracking progress towards global targets for protected areas. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, UK.