2021-05-19 17:31:04 GMT2021-05-20 01:31:04(Beijing Time) Xinhua English NAIROBI, May 19 (Xinhua) -- The international community has made significant progress toward meeting the target for acreage of land under protection, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report launched on Wednesday. According to the report by UNEP's biodiversity assessment arm World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 22.5 million square kilometers of land and inland water ecosystems and 28.1 million square kilometers of coastal waters and the ocean were protected or conserved in the last decade. "Protected and conserved areas play a crucial role in tackling biodiversity loss, and great progress has been made in recent years on strengthening the global network of protected and conserved areas," Neville Ash, director of World Conservation Monitoring Centre, said during the virtual launch of the report.