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Protected and conserved areas (PCAs) are key ecosystem management tools for conserving biodiversity and sustaining ecosystem services and social cobenefits. As countries adopt a 30% target for protection of land and sea under the Global Biodiversity Framework of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a critical question emerging is, which 30%? A risk‐based answer to this question is that the 30% that returns the greatest reductions in risks of species extinction and ecosystem collapse should be protected. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List protocols provide practical methods for assessing these risks. All species, including humans, depend on the integrity of ecosystems for their well‐being and survival. Africa is strategically important for ecosystem management due to convergence of high ecosystem diversity, intense pressures, and high levels of human dependency on nature. We reviewed the outcomes (e.g., applications of ecosystem red‐list assessments to protected‐area design, conservation planning, and management) of a symposium at the inaugural African Protected Areas Congress convened to discuss roles of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems in the design and management of PCAs. Recent progress was made in ecosystem assessment, with 920 ecosystem types assessed against the IUCN Red List criteria across 21 countries. Although these ecosystems spanned a diversity of environments across the continent, the greatest thematic gaps were for freshwater, marine, and subterranean realms, and large geographic gaps existed in North Africa and parts of West and East Africa. Assessment projects were implemented by a diverse community of government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and researchers. The assessments have influenced policy and management by informing extensions to and management of formal protected area networks supporting decision‐making for sustainable development, and informing ecosystem conservation and threat abatement within boundaries of PCAs and in surrounding landscapes and seascapes. We recommend further integration of risk assessments in environmental policy and enhanced investment in ecosystem red‐list assessment to fill current gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the stated applications of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems (RLE) is to influence government policy and decision-making. We share 15 years' experience in integrating an independently developed indicator of ecosystem threat status into government policies and practice. South Africa's ecosystem threat status indicator was conceptualised in the early 2000s and progressed from a project-based indicator to listing of threatened ecosystems in terms of national legislation in 2011. We show the range of applications of the indicator, from its use as a headline indicator in the National Biodiversity Assessment to its role as a direct trigger for Environmental Impact Assessment. The strong link between threatened ecosystems and systematic conservation planning in South Africa also enabled ecosystem threat status to inform multi-sectoral development planning and decision-making. We show how bridging products, data availability, persistent mainstreaming and stakeholder engagement have encouraged the use of the indicator in government policy. The advantages and disadvantages of legislative listing are shared. Sound scientific foundations, combined with pragmatism, have provided a policy-relevant tool for focussing management on threatened ecosystems. We make active recommendations that will facilitate the policy uptake of the IUCN RLE in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]