PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Brooke A Williams
AU  - James E M Watson
AU  - Hawthorne L Beyer
AU  - Carissa J Klein
AU  - Jamie Montgomery
AU  - Rebecca K Runting
AU  - Leslie A Roberson
AU  - Benjamin S Halpern
AU  - Hedley S Grantham
AU  - Caitlin D. Kuempel
AU  - Melanie Frazier
AU  - Oscar Venter
AU  - Amelia Wenger
TI  - The global rarity of intact coastal regions
AID  - 10.1101/2021.05.10.443490
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.05.10.443490
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/05/12/2021.05.10.443490.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/05/12/2021.05.10.443490.full
AB  - Management of the land-sea interface is considered essential for global conservation and sustainability objectives, as coastal regions maintain natural processes that support biodiversity and the livelihood of billions of people. However, assessments of coastal regions have focused on either strictly the terrestrial or marine realm, and as a consequence, we still have a poor understanding of the overall state of Earth’s coastal regions. Here, by integrating the terrestrial human footprint and marine cumulative human impact maps, we provide a global assessment of the anthropogenic pressures affecting coastal areas. Just 15.5% of coastal areas globally can be considered having low anthropogenic pressure, mostly found in Canada, Russia, and Greenland. Conversely, 47.9% of coastal regions are heavily impacted by humanity with most countries (84.1%) having >50% of their coastal regions degraded. Nearly half (43.3%) of protected areas across coastal regions are exposed to high human pressures. In order to meet global sustainability objectives, we identify those nations that must undertake greater actions to preserve and restore coastal regions so as to ensure global sustainable development objectives can be met.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.