Incorporate ecosystem services into the determination and promotion of protected areas based on multi-criteria decision-making method

Abstract

Establishing protected areas (PAs) is recognized as an effective measure to prevent ecological degradation and maintain biodiversity. The goal of 30 by 30 is ambitiously proposed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which commits governments around the world to protect 30 % of the world's land and ocean by 2030. However, there is still a significant gap in the current PAs. As an effective guarantee of human well-being, incorporating ecosystem services (ESs) conservation into the goals of PAs is being acknowledged. How to better incorporate ESs into management decisions to balance the negative trade-offs between services is a concern when considering the benefits of PAs. The ordered weighted average algorithm (OWA) provides an effective method of providing multiple benefits simultaneously. However, we noticed that the results are highly dependent on the input. We have noticed the different results of studies in the literature. Differences may represent regional differences and come from different scales and analysis methods. In general, we suggest that selecting service types based on regional differences and redundancy of service functions, selecting a reasonable number of services based on algorithm characteristics, and calibrating model parameters based on field research to improve the accuracy of service simulation are key issues. We continue to explore what problems exist in the selection of PAs in which regions, i.e., time and space scale determination, interaction relationship analysis, and subsequent management policy formulation, to make the research more insightful and policy-relevant. We believe that this article can provide strong insights when selecting and promoting PAs from around the world.