Data Contents
About the WDPA 2004
The launch of the 2003 version of the World Database on Protected Areas at the World Congress on Protected Areas, Durban, South Africa, September 2003 was a great success. Feedback received shows the importance on this tool in advancing the Conservation Agenda. The Congress also provided us with important feedback and has clarified the strategic directions this effort will need to follow to better address the growing and urgent needs of biodiversity conservation.
The WDPA 2004 was based in the 2003 version launched at the World Congress on Protected Areas. It includes substantial updates and new records to the previous version. Currently, the WDPA 2004 is the best global database on protected areas.
Nevertheless, we also are aware of the current limitations of this dataset. These limitations can be linked to data gaps, inaccuracies either of the geographic or attribute data, access to this database, and limitations in being able to track a larger body of information and knowledge concerning protected areas. This is a work in progress and it still requires further attention, resources and expertise.
Data gaps are the result of an uneven coverage of data across the world. One important gap is the lack of geographic data (polygon data) for many protected areas. In many cases this is the result of limitations in distributing some existing datasets because of conditions expressed by their owners or custodians. In some other cases, there is no GIS data available locally or its resolution is coarse.
Errors in the attribute data are also the result of evolving data over time that has not been updated or of differences concerning these data following different sources.
We have and important effort to correct geographic innacuracies in this dataset since the 2003 version. Nevertheless, many of these inaccuracies are the result of differences in the source documents, the use of conflicting base maps, or the result of mixing data digitized at very different scales. These can only be solved with better and newer data sources.