Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Land resources are one of the four components of the natural environment: water, air, land and living resources. In this context land is both: a physical "milieu" necessary for the development of natural vegetation as well as cultivated vegetation;a resource for human activities.  The data presented here give information concerning land use state and changes (e.g. agricultural land, forest land).  Land area excludes area under inland water bodies (i.e. major rivers and lakes).   Arable refers to all land generally under rotation, whether for temporary crops (double-cropped areas are counted only once) or meadows, or left fallow (less than five years). These data are not meant to indicate the amount of land that is potentially cultivable.  Permanent crops are those that occupy land for a long period and do not have to be planted for several years after each harvest (e.g. cocoa, coffee, rubber). Land under vines and trees and shrubs producing fruits, nuts and flowers, such as roses and jasmine, is so classified, as are nurseries (except those for forest trees, which should be classified under "forests and other wooded land").  Arable and permanent crop land is defined as the sum of arable area and land under permanent crops.  Permanent meadows and pastures refer to land used for five years or more to grow herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land).  Forest refers to land spanning more than 0.5 hectare (0.005 km2) and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ. This includes land from which forests have been cleared but that will be reforested in the foreseeable future. This excludes woodland or forest predominantly under agricultural or urban land use and used only for recreation purposes.

This dataset provides country-level protected area coverage for terrestrial, marine and coastal domains calculated from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). It provides disaggregations of protected area total by IUCN management objectives. The dataset spans the period 1950-2022 and reports results for all OECD countries as well as South Africa, all countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean and a subset of countries in South-East Asia. A number of country aggregates are included: Euro area, European Union, Advanced economies, Emerging market economies, G7, G20, OECD, OECD Europe, OECD Asia Oceania, OECD Americas and Latin American countries. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has developed an internationally agreed definition of protected areas, which classify them as strict nature reserves and wilderness areas (Ia and Ib), national parks (II), natural monuments or features (III), habitat or species management areas (IV), protected landscapes or seascapes (V), and protected areas with sustainable use of natural resources (VI).