Beyond area: Evaluating Australia's contribution to Aichi Target 11 and implications for 30 × 30

Abstract Australia has set commitments to address its biodiversity crisis, with expanding area‐based conservation forming a key part of its strategy, aligned with the nation's commitments of “30 × 30” in accordance with the Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Moving forward with these goals requires a picture of how far we have come. However, there is limited understanding of how advancements in Australia's National Reserve System (NRS) have contributed to meeting previous global commitments, specifically the 2010–2020 Aichi Targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Here, we assess the expansion of Australia's land‐based protected area network between 2010 and 2022 and the level of contribution to the biodiversity‐focused components of the Aichi protected area target (Target 11) including (i) “areas of particular importance for biodiversity”; (ii) “areas of particular importance for ecosystem services”; (iii) “ecologically representative”; and (iv) “well‐connected.” We found the total area protected increased substantially during the period (from 12.1% to 22.3% of Australia's terrestrial and freshwater environments), with large increases in the coverage of intact landscapes (from 23.5% to 46.3% coverage). But the NRS expansion made limited contribution to enhancing other metrics of biodiversity coverage. For example, since 2010, the extent of a threatened species' range within the NRS increased from a median of 20.5% to 23.3%, and as of 2022, there were still 160 species (11%) with <1% of their range in the NRS. During the 12‐year period, bioregional representation increased by a median of 1.5%, skewed heavily toward enlarging protection of bioregions with high levels of pre‐existing protection in 2010. By 2022, only 45.8% of bioregions achieved or surpassed a coverage level of 17% of their area. Given these results, we discuss how Australia's area‐based conservation could be more strategically targeted in order to contribute to achieving the biodiversity goals outlined in Target 3 of the GBF.