Protected Areas

Are They Safeguarding Biodiversity?

Lucas N. Joppa, Jonathan E. M. Bailie, John G. Robinson

• Editorial: Wiley-Blackwell
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118338148
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Biological Sciences
• Categoría: Biology

Protected areas spearhead our response to the rapidly accelerating biodiversity crisis. However, while the number of protected areas has been growing rapidly over the past 20 years, the extent to which the world's protected areas are effectively conserving species, ecosystems, and ecosystem services is poorly understood.

• Highlights new techniques for better management and monitoring of protected areas

• Sets guidelines for the decision making processes involved in setting up and maintaining protected areas

• Fully international in scope and covering all ecosystems and biomes

Part I
The Global Protected Area Portfolio

1
Government Commitments for Protected Areas: Status of Implementation and Sources of Leverage to Enhance Ambition

L. Krueger

The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA

Introduction

The past 20 years has seen a dramatic increase in the number and extent of protected areas worldwide. Although the legal creation of a park does not guarantee the conservation of the biodiversity within it, it is usually an essential first step for securing natural values in a place, particularly as global population and development pressures leave few landscapes and seascapes untouched by humanity. As such, the ongoing creation of protected areas and expansion of the protected area portfolio are often cited as some of the greatest successes of conservation. While the establishment of protected areas clearly recognizes the value of protection as a way to mitigate human impacts on biodiversity, it is appropriate to review the political mechanisms that have driven these achievements: What is the role of formal political commitments, and what are the potentials and limitations as we seek more comprehensive and effective conservation outcomes moving forward?

Governments at many levels have long recognized the value of protected areas, and indeed, the very concept of conservation or reserve areas has an ancient provenance. But since the 1992 Rio Summit, the global protected area estate has dramatically expanded largely in response to explicit commitments made by governments in the international fora. International treaties have contributed to a process of changing global norms and have encouraged governments to make deeper commitments to protected areas; among them are the World Heritage Convention, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. In addition, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), while not a formal intergovernmental agreement, has done much to promote a global community of practice in support of protected areas. Most recently, in 2010, 193 nations in the world committed to the CBD’s Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 to increase “effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative and well connected systems of protected areas” to at least 17% of the terrestrial and inland water and 10% of the coastal and marine areas by 2020 (CBD, 2010a).

This chapter reviews the role and status of legal frameworks and other commitments for protected areas, and it explores the relationship between scientific evidence and political practicality in implementing current targets and achieving the more ambitious ones. The rationale for these targets is contested. On the one hand, they are seen as underambitious, as biodiversity research has demonstrated that even successful implementation of current targets is unlikely to prevent unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss. On the other hand, the very concept of protected areas is challenged in some quarters as outmoded, and their expansion is seen as a hindrance to more economically profitable land uses. Under these circumstances, the international policy debates around protected areas become crucial arenas for reconciling multiple societal goals and can help the world achieve a rational and effective level of protection given our best understanding of the science and the costs and benefits of alternatives. Although the link between international political commitment and action is not always direct, it can establish channels to promote deeper and more sustainable public support for conservation.

Emergence and evolution of government commitments on protected areas

Protected areas are not a new concept. Rulers have made formal or informal declarations to protect areas for centuries, usually to protect royal hunting grounds or sacred sites. Probably the oldest continuously protected area still managed as such today is the Bogd Khan Uul park in Mongolia, established by Buddhist and Manchu authorities in 1778 and currently managed as a strictly protected area and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (UNESCO, 2013). The creation of Yellowstone by the United States Congress in 1872 is often recognized as the inception of the modern era of formally designated protected areas, but it hardly represented a watershed event: National park creation continued to be sporadic and modest for most of the next hundred years after Yellowstone.

One of the earliest efforts to build an international consensus around protected areas was the International Conference for the Protection of Fauna and Flora, held in London in 1933. The conference led to the first attempts to categorize types of protected areas (Phillips, 2004). It was not until 1962, however, that the international community assembled its first UN list of parks for the First World Conference on National Parks, held in Seattle. The Seattle conference was bedeviled by debates over terminology and nomenclature in deciding what could and could not be included on the United Nations list. These debates stimulated further attempts to define management categories through the International Commission on National Parks (later the WCPA, a voluntary commission of the IUCN).

Though IUCN is not a legally binding treaty mechanism, its voluntary approaches have been essential in building a community of practice around protected areas and spurring their use as a tool by governments. WCPA’s continuing efforts to update and refine the protected area management categories (in 1978, 1994, and 2012) contributed to enhanced national efforts to build national systems by providing a template that allowed the categorization of national laws and helping standardize nomenclature (Dillon, 2004). The CBD further promoted this effort in 2004 by formally endorsing the IUCN categories and encouraging governments to assign categories consistent with those developed by IUCN (CBD, 2004).

These efforts by IUCN and national protected area managers established a consistent definition of protected areas, advanced the understanding of protected area characteristics, and addressed the need for consistent international standards. However, none of these works bound governments to specific commitments or obligations. A series of more formal international agreements starting in the 1970s helped disseminate emerging scientific consensus about environmental problems among policy makers and began to create a web of obligations on nations that have steadily grown in scope and specificity (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Some international milestones in the evolution of global protected area commitments

Year	Event	Outcome/target related to protected areas
1968	Biosphere Conference	Led to creation of Man and Biosphere Programme (in 1971) and UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (1974)
1972	World Heritage Convention	Conserve “precisely delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation…”
1972	UN Conference on the Human Environment	Stockholm declaration calls for safeguarding “representative samples of natural ecosystems…”
1975	Ramsar Convention enters into force	Parties must designate suitable wetlands for the List of Wetlands of International Importance (“Ramsar List”) and ensure their effective management
1982	3rd World Parks Congress	Objective to protect 10% of the terrestrial ecosystems
1987	Brundtland Commission	Called on countries to “triple” extent of protected areas (to ~12%)
1992	4th World Parks Congress	>10% of each major biome (by 2000)
1992	CBD	Calls for establishment of national systems of protected areas
2002	CBD COP 6	10% of the world’s ecological regions protected (Decision VI/9)
2002	World Summit on Sustainable Development	First Marine Protected Areas target: MPA networks established by 2012
2004	CBD COP 7	10% (+ effective, comprehensive, representative qualifiers) with time-bound milestones (Decision VII/28)
2010	CBD COP 10	Strategic Plan/Aichi Target 11: 17% terrestrial/10% marine ecosystems protected by 2020

The Man and Bios...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: Do Protected Areas Safeguard Biodiversity?
• Part I: The Global Protected Area Portfolio
• Part II: The Fate of Species in Protected Areas
• Part III: Managing Protected Areas at System Scales
• Part IV: Monitoring Protected Areas at System Scales
• Index
• End User License Agreement