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25 Year Environment Plan Outcome Indicator K4: 2024 update on the extent of Protected Areas in the UK Overseas Territories 2025

Abstract

The 25 Year Environment Plan (Defra 2018) and its 2023 update, the Environmental Improvement Plan (Defra 2023), outline the UK Government’s aspirations to help our environment “regain and retain good health”. Accompanying the plan is a comprehensive set of 66 indicators – the Outcome Indicator Framework – which show how the environment is changing and whether our interventions are effective (Defra 2019). Four of these indicators relate to Defra’s international ambitions to reduce the UK’s global footprint and support overseas countries to protect and improve the environment.

The UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) support a highly diverse range of terrestrial and marine species, habitats and ecosystems. Protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures are key tools for conserving this biodiversity, much of which is endemic and globally threatened. 25 Year Environment Plan Outcome Indicator K4 measures the extent and condition of terrestrial and marine protected areas in the UKOTs.

While work to progress the protected area condition aspect of this indicator is ongoing, JNCC maintains a time series of yearly PA extent and coverage results from a base year of 2020. This report (JNCC Report 792) presents a fourth update, including protected areas and OECMs established to the end of 2024, and provides technical information to accompany interim indicator K4 on the Outcome Indicator Framework dashboard. The results for 2020 to 2023 were presented in JNCC reports 679, 704, 735 and 760 respectively, available from The National Archives.

The whole time series is revised and republished annually to reflect the latest information and account for any corrections or improvements to underlying datasets. Aggregated and Territory-level statistics are also published on a dedicated JNCC webpage and are available to download in the Excel spreadsheet accompanying this report.

These resources may not be fully accessible for all users. If you need copies in a different or more accessible format, please contact Communications@jncc.gov.uk.

Resource type Publication

Topic category Environment

Reference date 2025·05·01

Citation
Wright, H.L. 2025. 25 Year Environment Plan Outcome Indicator K4: 2024 update on the extent of Protected Areas in the UK Overseas Territories. JNCC Report 792, JNCC, Peterborough, ISSN 0963-8091.

Lineage
This report presents the extent of protected areas in the UK Overseas Territories up to the end of 2024, as part of 25 Year Environment Plan Outcome Indicator K4. Previous reports presented the extent of protected areas in 2020 (JNCC Report 679), 2021 (JNCC Report 704), 2022 (JNCC Report 735) and 2023 (JNCC Report 760).

Responsible organisation
Communications, JNCC publisher

Limitations on public access No limitations

Use constraints Available under the Open Government Licence 3.0

Metadata date 2025·05·16

Metadata point of contact
Communications, JNCC

Temporal extent 2020·12·31 2024·12·31

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