Protected Areas (New Caledonia)
This layer maps the network of protected areas across New Caledonia, a global biodiversity hotspot in the south-west Pacific.
Source: INPN + data.gouv.nc Year: 2026 Category: Transition risks · Sensitive areas · Protected areas Coverage: Region (New Caledonia) Format: Boundary polygons Used in risk analysis: No (contextual layer; not used in materiality scoring)
What it shows
This layer maps the network of protected areas across New Caledonia, a global biodiversity hotspot in the south-west Pacific. It includes nature reserves, integral reserves, provincial parks, wilderness reserves, Ramsar wetland sites, UNESCO World Heritage sites and sustainably managed areas, spanning Province Nord, Province Sud and the government-administered territories. These areas concentrate conservation, regulatory, reputational and access risk, making the layer a key screening input for sites and supply chains in the territory.
How it is built
The boundaries combine data from the French National Inventory of Natural Heritage (INPN) and the New Caledonian open-data portal (data.gouv.nc). The range of provincial and territorial designations is assembled into a single set of regional polygons, each representing the official extent of a protected or designated area. No score is computed; the layer is a presence-or-absence boundary set rather than a graded index.
How to read it
This is a boundary layer, so the relevant question is intersection: a site that falls inside, or close to, one of these polygons is flagged as overlapping a protected area. Overlap indicates potential exposure to conservation restrictions, permitting requirements and heightened stakeholder scrutiny. Areas outside the polygons carry no protected-area flag from this dataset.
Class thresholds
This is a categorical presence / boundary layer, not a continuous physical quantity, so it carries no numeric thresholds and no graded risk classes. The mapped "quantity" is simply the official extent of each designated protected area in New Caledonia — nature reserves, integral reserves, provincial parks, wilderness reserves, Ramsar sites, UNESCO World Heritage sites and sustainably managed areas — stored as vector polygons (149 features) carrying only a name field (NOM).
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Inside / intersecting a polygon | Site overlaps a protected area |
| Outside all polygons | No protected-area flag from this dataset |
The trigger is a geometric intersection: the layer's proximity is defined as type = "intersection" on the Sensitive areas dimension, so a site is associated with a protected area when its geometry overlaps one of the polygons. The configuration sets no proximity buffer distance, so the test is direct overlap rather than a distance band. In Darwin's product this layer is contextual only and is not used in materiality scoring, so it does not by itself set a risk flag.
How these thresholds were set. There are no thresholds to set: presence is determined entirely by the official boundaries supplied by the source authorities (INPN/MNHN and the New Caledonia open-data portal). Darwin assembles the provincial and territorial designations into a single polygon set without applying any classification or cut-off of its own.
Source
Inventaire National du Patrimoine Naturel (INPN/MNHN) and the New Caledonia open-data portal (data.gouv.nc).
Comparison with the WWF Risk Filter Suite
This layer corresponds to WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter indicator S14_1 Protected/Conserved Areas. The WWF Risk Filter Suite uses the global World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA, UNEP-WCMC, accessed via IBAT). Darwin instead assembles official provincial and territorial datasets for New Caledonia, which can extend or localise coverage relative to the global WDPA and bring together several designation types (including Ramsar and World Heritage sites) within one regional layer.
Generated from darwin/layers/layer-protected-areas-new-caledonia.toml and risk_indicator_pairs.toml (develop).