Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because
of their recognised natural, ecological and/or cultural values. There are several kinds of
protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the enabling laws of each country
or the regulations of the international organisations involved. The term "protected area" also includes
Marine Protected Areas, the boundaries of which will include some area of ocean, and
Transboundary Protected Areas that overlap multiple countries which remove the borders
inside the area for conservation and economic purposes. There are over 161,000 protected
areas in the world with more added daily, representing between 10 and 15 percent of
the world's land surface area. By contrast, only 1.17% of the world's oceans is included
in the world's ~6,800 Marine Protected Areas. Protected areas are essential for biodiversity
conservation, often providing habitat and protection from hunting for threatened and
endangered species. Protection helps maintain ecological processes that cannot survive in
most intensely managed landscapes and seascapes.
Definition Generally, protected areas are understood
to be those in which human occupation or at least the exploitation of resources is limited.
The definition that has been widely accepted across regional and global frameworks has
been provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in its categorisation
guidelines for protected areas. The definition is as follows:
"A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other
effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem
services and cultural values."
Protection of natural resources Protected areas are designated with the objective
of conserving biodiversity and providing an indicator for that conservation's progress,
but the extent to which they defend resources and ecosystem dynamics from degradation are
slightly more complex. Protected areas will usually encompass several other zones that
have been deemed important for particular conservation uses, such as Important Bird
Areas and Endemic Bird Areas, Centres of Plant Diversity, Indigenous and Community Conserved
Areas, Alliance for Zero Extinction Sites and Key Biodiversity Areas among others. Likewise,
a protected area or an entire network of protected areas may lie within a larger geographic zone
that is recognised as a terrestrial or marine ecoregions, or a crisis ecoregions for example.
As a result, Protected Areas can encompass a broad range of governance types. Indeed,
governance of protected areas has emerged a critical factor in their success.
Subsequently, the range of natural resources that any one protected area may guard is vast.
Many will be allocated primarily for species conservation whether it be flora or fauna
or the relationship between them, but protected areas are similarly important for conserving
sites of cultural importance and considerable reserves of natural resources such as;
Carbon Stocks: Carbon emissions from deforestation account for an estimated 20% of global carbon
emissions, so in protecting the worlds carbon stocks greenhouse gas emissions are reduced
and longterm land cover change is prevented, which is an effective strategy in the struggle
against global warming. Of all global terrestrial carbon stock, 15.2% is contained within protected
areas. Protected areas in South America hold 27% of the world's carbon stock, which is
the highest percentage of any country in both absolute terms and as a proportion of the
total stock. Rainforests: 18.8% of the world's forest is
covered by protected areas and sixteen of the twenty forest types have 10% or more protected
area coverage. Of the 670 ecoregions with forest cover, 54% have 10% or more of their
forest cover protected under IUCN Categories I – VI.
Mountains: Nationally designated protected areas cover 14.3% of the world’s mountain
areas, and these mountainous protected areas made up 32.5% of the world’s total terrestrial
protected area coverage in 2009. Mountain protected area coverage has increased globally
by 21% since 1990 and out of the 198 countries with mountain areas, 43.9% still have less
than 10% of their mountain areas protected. Annual updates on each of these analyses are
made in order to make comparisons to the Millennium Development Goals and several other fields
of analysis are expected to be introduced in the monitoring of protected areas management
effectiveness, such as freshwater and marine or coastal studies which are currently underway,
and islands and drylands which are currently in planning.
IUCN Protected Area Management Categories
Through its World Commission on Protected Areas, the IUCN has developed six Protected
Area Management Categories that define protected areas according to their management objectives,
which are internationally recognised by various national governments and the United Nations.
The categories provide international standards for defining protected areas and encourage
conservation planning according to their management aims.
IUCN Protected Area Management Categories: Category Ia — Strict Nature Reserve
Category Ib — Wilderness Area Category II — National Park
Category III — Natural Monument or Feature Category IV — Habitat/Species Management
Area Category V — Protected Landscape/Seascape
Category VI – Protected Area with sustainable use of natural resources
History
Protected areas are cultural artifacts, and their story is entwined with that of human
civilization. Protecting places and resources is by no means a modern concept, whether it
be indigenous communities guarding sacred sites or the convention of European hunting
reserves. Over 2000 years ago, royal decrees in India protected certain areas. In Europe,
rich and powerful people protected hunting grounds for a thousand years. Moreover, the
idea of protection of special places is universal: for example, it occurs among the communities
in the Pacific and in parts of Africa. However, the modern protected areas movement had nineteenth-century
origins in North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Other countries were quick
to follow suit. While the idea of protected areas spread around the world in the twentieth
century, the driving force was different in different regions. Thus, in North America,
protected areas were about safeguarding dramatic and sublime scenery; in Africa, the concern
was with game parks; in Europe, landscape protection was more common.
Initially, protected areas were recognised on a national scale, differing from country
to country until 1933, when an effort to reach an international consensus on the standards
and terminology of protected areas took place at the International Conference for the Protection
of Fauna and Flora in London. At the 1962 First World Conference on National Parks in
Seattle the effect the Industrial Revolution had had on the world's natural environment
was acknowledged, and the need to preserve it for future generations was established.
Since then, it has been an international commitment on behalf of both governments and non-government
organisations to maintain the networks that hold regular revisions for the succinct categorisations
that have been developed to regulate and record protected areas. In 1972, the Stockholm Declaration
of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment endorsed the protection of representative
examples of all major ecosystem types as a fundamental requirement of national conservation
programmes. This has become a core principle of conservation biology and has remained so
in recent resolutions - including the World Charter for Nature in 1982, the Rio Declaration
at the Earth Summit in 1992, and the Johannesburg Declaration 2002.
Recently, the importance of protected areas has been brought to the fore at the threat
of human-induced global warming and the understanding of the necessity to consume natural resources
in a sustainable manner. The spectrum of benefits and values of protected areas is recognised
not only ecologically, but culturally through further development in the arena of Indigenous
and Community Conserved Areas. International programmes for the protection of representative
ecosystems remain relatively progressive, with less advances in marine and freshwater
biomes. Challenges
How to manage areas protected for conservation brings up a range of challenges - whether
it be regarding the local population, specific ecosystems or the design of the reserve itself
- and because of the many unpredicatable elements in ecology issues, each protected area requires
a case-specific set of guidelines. Enforcing protected area boundaries is a costly
and labour-heavy endeavour, particularly if the allocation of a new protected region places
new restrictions on the use of resources by the native people which may lead to their
subsequent displacement. This has troubled relationships between conservationists and
rural communities in many protected regions and is often why many Wildlife Reserves and
National Parks face the human threat of poaching for the illegal bushmeat or trophy trades,
which are resorted to as an alternative form of substinence.
There is increasing and justifiable pressure to take proper account of human needs when
setting up protected areas and these sometimes have to be "traded off" against conservation
needs. Whereas in the past governments often made decisions about protected areas and informed
local people afterwards, today the emphasis is shifting towards greater discussions with
stakeholders and joint decisions about how such lands should be set aside and managed.
Such negotiations are never easy but usually produce stronger and longer-lasting results
for both conservation and people. In some countries, protected areas can be
assigned without the infrastructure and networking needed to substitute consumable resources
and subtantiatively protect the area from development or misuse. The soliciting of protected
areas may require regulation to the level of meeting demands for food, feed, livestock
and fuel, and the legal enforcement of not only the protected area itself but also 'buffer
zones' surrounding it, which may help to resist destabilisation.
Effectiveness One of the main concerns regarding protected
areas on land and sea is their effectiveness at preventing the ongoing loss of biodiversity.
There are multiple case studies indicating the positive effects of protected areas on
terrestrial and marine species. However, those cases do not represent the majority of protected
areas. Several limitations that may preclude their success include: their small size and
large isolation to each other, their limited role at preventing the large plethora of factors
affecting biodiversity, their large cost and their increasing conflict with human demands
for nature's goods and services. By country
United States
As of 31 January 2008, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, the United
States had a total of 6,770 terrestrial nationally designated protected areas. These protected
areas cover 2,607,131 km2, or 27.08 percent of the land area of the United States. This
is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world.
Nicaragua O Parks, Wildlife, and Recreation is a Private
Protected Area, also known as a 'Private Reserve' predominantly managed for biodiversity conservation,
protected without formal government recognition and is owned and stewarded by the O corporation
International. O parks plays a particularly important role in conserving critical biodiversity
in a section of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor known as the Paso del Istmo, located
along the 12-mile-wide isthmus between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean.
European Union Natura 2000 is a network of protected areas
established by the European Union across all Member States. It is made up of Special Areas
of Conservation and Special Protection Areas designated respectively under the Habitats
Directive and Birds Directive. 787,767 km2 are designated as terrestrial sites and 251,564 km2
as marine sites. Overall, 18 percent of the EU land mass is designated.
See also
References
External links World Database on Protected Areas
ProtectedPlanet.net United Nations Environment Programme World
Conservation Monitoring Center, Protected Areas Programme
IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas IUCN Global Protected Area Programme
2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership Indicator Factsheet: Management Effectiveness of Protected
Areas A-Z of Areas of Biodiversity Importance
Brazilian Amazon Protected areas - Instituto Socioambiental