Quality of governance and effectiveness of protected areas: crucial concepts for conservation planning

Protected areas (PAs) are a key tool for biodiversity conservation and play a central role in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Recently, the effectiveness of PAs has been questioned, and assessing how effective they are in enabling the future persistence of biodiversity is not trivial. Here, we focus on terrestrial PAs and clarify the terminology related to PA effectiveness, distinguishing between management and ecological aspects. We suggest that the quality of governance affects both aspects of effectiveness but recognize a lack of synthetic understanding of the topic. We present a conceptual framework linking the underlying mechanisms by which the quality of governance affects conservation outcomes in PAs and how this relates to conservation planning. We show that it is crucial to separate pressure and response and how these together will lead to the observed conservation outcomes. We urge for more focused attention on governance factors and in particular more empirical research on how to address causality and how to account for the quality of governance when prioritizing actions. Our framework is linked to the classic concepts of systematic conservation planning and clarifies the strategies available to achieve a comprehensive and effective network of PAs.