The Protected Planet Report 2012 reviews progress towards the achievement of international protected area targets.
Resource Type: ReportsIndigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) are managed areas that are voluntarily conserved by local or indigenous communities for conservation and cultural purposes. This handbook is intended as a guide for those who wish to learn about ICCAs and the newly developed ICCA Registry tool, which aims to develop awareness, recognition and documented values of ICCAs through a community-supported database, maps and an interactive, multimedia website. Communities who govern and manage ICCAs will find this handbook particularly helpful to understand how they can contribute to and benefit from the Registry if they wish. This handbook adheres to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and supports the application of bio-cultural community protocols in maintaining the integrity of community knowledge and resources.
Resource Type: ReportsA reduction in forest area should result in a reduction of its number of species and, moreover, do so in a characteristic way according to the familiar species-area relationship. Brooks, Pimm & Collar (1997) applied this formula to the losses in forest area in the Philippines and Indonesia. Independently derived totals of the number of endemic bird species that are threatened with extinction broadly agree with these predicted losses. In some cases, however, predicted losses overestimate or underestimate the actual numbers of threatened species.
Resource Type: Journal PapersIn 2008, the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted scientific criteria for identifying ecologically or biologically significant marine areas in need of protection on the open oceans and deep seas.
While much scientific discovery lies ahead, available information and current and emerging methodologies already allow us to begin identifying oceanic features that are likely of particular ecological or biological importance.
The IUCN Summit on Protected Area Management Categories was held in Almeria, Spain in May 2007. It aimed to test the opinions of key thinkers and policy makers regarding the revision of guidelines to interpretation of the six IUCN protected area categories. The meeting was generously supported by the Junta de Andalusia, the Spanish Ministry of Environment and the foundation Biodiversidad. The meeting operated through plenary sessions and a series of specialised workshops, with many presentations and time for detailed discussion. There were two field trips, midway through the meeting and at the end. More than a hundred people attended from over fifty countries around of the world.
Resource Type: ReportsThis study reviews the biogeographic and biodiversity coverage of the current World Heritage network and identifies broad gaps. It also identifies priority sites for biodiversity conservation that may merit World Heritage listing in the future and reviews how these could help fill the existing gaps in the network.
Resource Type: ReportsThe 2003 UN List of Protected Areas, the thirteenth produced since 1962, records the global community's endeavour to conserve the Earth's natural places. This is the first version to attempt a comprehensive presentation of all the world's known protected areas, listing 102,102 sites covering 18.8 million sq km compared to just over 1,000 protected areas in 1962.
Resource Type: ReportsThe areas of the ocean that lie beyond national jurisdiction limits, also called the high seas, are vulnerable to human activities and currently underrepresented when compared to terrestrial and nearshore1 marine environments under protection. Thus, there is a growing movement among the conservation community to increase measures, such as marine protected areas, that can ensure protection of the largely undiscovered but important biodiversity of the high seas.
Resource Type: ReportsBiologists view Protected Areas (PAs) as natural areas established and managed primarily for the conservation of nature. However, many early Pas were established for aesthetic or socio-economic reasons and received little scientific input to their design. More recently, scientists have identified gaps in PA networks and various contemporary PAs have been established to provide for habitats and species in need of protection.
Scientists have also modelled minimum areas and population sizes that should be protected to prevent extinctions arising from demographic or chance causes. However, these theoretical ideals are difficult to put into practice, particularly as PAs increasingly face more immediate external threats. If scientists are to influence future PA design, and if PAs are to succeed in the long term, these concepts must be applied in practice. Therefore, sufficient protection must be integrated with human needs and aspirations in the design of future protected areas.
This document provides information about the standards and data held within the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). The WDPA Data Standards specify a common set of information that data providers are asked to provide when submitting data to the WDPA. These ensure that the most vital information is collected and that the data is supplied in a common format that is globally interoperable. This document also provides detailed information on the type of information and each attribute/field within the WDPA.
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