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IPAs are key sites for exceptional botanical richness; rare, threatened and socio-economically valuable plant species; and rare and threatened habitats.
Plantlife developed the first IPA criteria in 2001.
Important Plant Areas (IPAs) are some of the most vital places on Earth for wild plant diversity.
They are a globally recognised tool for protecting rare and threatened plants, valuable species with cultural or economic significance, and endangered habitats. In the face of nearly 2 in 5 plant species potentially threatened with extinction, understanding where these species and habitats are found has never been more important.
Once identified, IPAs can be prioritised for targeted management and conservation actions to safeguard and restore the species and habitats within them. With a huge number of plants needing conservation attention worldwide, this prioritisation means we can focus our efforts to maximise impact.
Scaling up and expanding the IPA programme, by identifying more sites and delivering action at these sites, are key priorities for Plantlife’s global work.
We are facing a biodiversity crisis globally and losing species and ecosystems faster than ever previously recorded. With their loss we also lose the essential resources and support systems that sustain our daily existence; this has profound and extreme environmental, social and economic consequences.
But we know that conservation action works and IPAs have a critical role in halting the decline of plants globally. We must use tools and approaches like IPAs if we are to protect the essential resources and functions that sustain the Earth’s ecosystems and, by extension, all life.
Plantlife developed IPAs more than 2 decades ago and has been instrumental in its uptake and traction – particularly across Europe and the wider Mediterranean region.
We work closely on IPAs with other organisations like Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who developed their Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAs) programme in 2017, covering a total of 9 countries in tropical South America, Africa and Asia. We also work with local partners in-country to help implement IPA national programmes, across multiple sectors and scales.
More than 70 countries are now involved in IPA work across the globe. Several other countries are starting the process; some are specifically doing do so to implement the actions of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) and to meet the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Identifying and protecting IPAs can definitively contribute to the “30×30” target of protecting and restoring 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030.
Important Plant Areas around the world are home to hundreds of the most threatened species and cover vast areas of the most threatened habitats. Although they are not legally designated protected areas, their identification can lead to formal levels of legal protection.
Effective protection and conservation of sites must happen through sensitively balancing the benefits to species and habitats with improving the lives and livelihoods of the communities living alongside these. One of the central tenets of an IPA programme is a bottom-up inclusive approach: from the outset, the process opens all spaces at the table and embraces diverse knowledge, values and opinions.
Important Plant Areas have also been shown to support better decision-making for site-based conservation, such as developing conservation management plans, avoiding development in sensitive areas, and guiding financial investments to prevent biodiversity loss. The data generated can also feed into national and international policy-making, strategies and plans.
There’s a total of 2,947 IPAs that can be found in 48 countries, and there are 70 countries involved in IPA work around the world.
The IPA approach provides data and information that can be used by countries for their national reporting obligations e.g., the progress meeting the targets Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and subsequently the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.
Including:
IPAs and their associated data and management are also relevant to other international frameworks such as the IUCN Red Listing of species and of Ecosystems, and the Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) programme.
IPAs can help to raise national awareness of and pride in the biodiversity of a country, acting as a means of stimulating local interest in plant species and habitats through education programmes.
Temperate rainforests are among the world's rarest and most biodiverse ecosystems. And yet, despite their ecological importance, they remain largely overlooked in global conservation efforts.
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