Overview

The pywdpa Python package is an interface to the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) hosted on the Protected Planet website at https://www.protectedplanet.net. The pywdpa package provides functions to download shapefiles of protected areas (PA) for any countries with an iso3 code using the Protected Planet API at https://api.protectedplanet.net. The pywdpa package translates some functions of the R package worldpa (https://github.com/FRBCesab/worldpa) in the Python language.

Terms and conditions

You must ensure that the following citation is always clearly reproduced in any publication or analysis involving the Protected Planet Materials in any derived form or format:

UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (YEAR) Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Available at: www.protectedplanet.net (dataset downloaded the YEAR/MONTH).

For further details on terms and conditions of the WDPA usage, please visit the page: https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/legal.

Prerequisites

sudo apt update
sudo apt install gdal-bin libgdal-dev

Installation

The easiest way to install the pywdpa Python package is via pip in the OSGeo4W Shell for Windows or in a virtual environment for Linux.

For Linux, create and activate a virtual environment before install pywdpa with pip:

cd ~
# Create a directory for virtual environments
mkdir venvs
# Create the virtual environment with venv
python3 -m venv ~/venvs/venv-pywdpa
# Activate (start) the virtual environment
source ~/venvs/venv-pywdpa/bin/activate

Install Python dependencies and pywdpa in the OSGeo4W Shell or in the newly created virtual environment:

# Upgrade pip, setuptools, and wheel
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
# Install numpy
python3 -m numpy
# Install gdal Python bindings (the correct version)
python3 -m pip install gdal==$(gdal-config --version)
# Install pywdpa. This will install all other dependencies
python3 -m pip install pywdpa

If you want to install the development version of pywdpa, replace the last line with:

python3 -m pip install https://github.com/ghislainv/pywdpa/archive/master.zip

To deactivate and delete the virtual environment:

deactivate
rm -R ~/venvs/venv-pywdpa # Just remove the repository

In case of problem while installing GDAL Python bindings, try the following command:

python3 -m pip install  --no-cache-dir --force-reinstall gdal==$(gdal-config --version)

Contributing

The pywdpa Python package is Open Source and released under the GNU GPL version 3 license. Anybody who is interested can contribute to the package development following our Community guidelines. Every contributor must agree to follow the project’s Code of conduct.