Protected Areas and World Heritage Programme

1997 United Nations List of Protected Areas

Introduction

Protected areas are a vital contribution to the conservation of the world's natural and cultural resources. Their values range from the protection of natural habitats and associated flora and fauna, to the maintenance of environmental stability of surrounding regions. Protected areas can provide opportunities for rural development and rational use of marginal lands, generating income and creating jobs, for research and monitoring, for conservation education, and for recreation and tourism. As a result, all but a few countries have developed systems of protected areas.

However, these systems vary considerably from one country to another, depending on needs and priorities, and on differences in legislative, institutional and financial support. Also, the range of services and values that protected areas provide is such that some management objectives are not compatible with others. This has lead to the emergence of a plethora of protected area designations, created under national legal instruments. The aim of the UN List is to provide a single, definitive list of protected areas, classified according to a common system of management categories defined by the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA).

The United Nations List of National Parks and Equivalent Reserves was drawn up at the request of the United Nations following a resolution adopted by the General Assembly at its Sixteenth Session in December 1962 on 'Economic Development and Nature Conservation'. This resolution served to endorse an earlier resolution (No. 713) of the 27th Session of the UN Economic and Social Council held in 1959, which recognised 'National Parks and Equivalent Reserves' as an important factor in the wise use of natural resources, and led to the compilation of the first World List of National Parks and Equivalent Reserves.

IUCN was instrumental in the preparation of the two resolutions, and has since had primary responsibility for the compilation and maintenance of the list. The UN List is now prepared jointly by the IUCN-WCPA, and by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC). The previous edition, the 1993 United Nations List of National Parks and Protected Areas was published in 1994. Earlier editions appeared in 1961/2, 1966 (English version 1971), 1972 (addendum to the 1966/71 list), 1973, 1974, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1985 and 1990. From 1982 until 1994, the title referred to both national parks and protected areas. Upon the advice of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) the current title, the United Nations List of Protected Areas has been adopted, to underscore the broad range of functions served by protected areas and to avoid unjustified emphasis of the term 'national park'. The 1997 UN List is the fifth to be prepared jointly by WCMC and WCPA.

Since its establishment in 1960 WCPA (formerly the Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas - CNPPA) has grown to be the largest global network of protected area managers and specialists. By January 1997 it had over 1,500 members in 160 countries. It is centrally co-ordinated by a Steering Committee and is supported by the IUCN Protected Areas Programme.

Its objectives are:

• To assist in the planning of protected areas and their integration into all sectors by providing strategic advice to policy makers.
• To strengthen capacity and effectiveness of protected area managers through the provision of guidance, tools and information, and as a vehicle for networking.
• To increase investment in protected areas by persuading public and corporate donors, as well as governments, of their value.

The WCPA Network currently comprises 15 regional groups, and three thematic groups dealing with World Heritage, Marine Protected Areas and Mountain Protected Areas. Six Specialist Task Forces deal with economic benefits, financing, tourism, training, systems planning and information management in relation to protected areas and two informal networks deal with grassland protected areas and cave and karst management.

The WCMC Protected Areas and Landscapes Programme is the successor to the Protected Areas Data Unit, which was established by CNPPA in 1981 to handle ever increasing amounts of information, and to assist the Commission in preparing publications on protected areas around the world.

One objective of WCMC's work on protected areas is to provide accurate, up-to-date information on individual protected areas and protected area systems directly to those who need it, or to identify from where such information can be obtained.

In order to meet this objective, WCMC collaborates with the many agencies around the world that manage protected areas, and with conservationists and scientists who work in this field. Many of the individuals involved are members of WCPA. WCMC manages information on natural World Heritage properties on behalf of IUCN and UNESCO and collaborates with the Ramsar Convention Bureau on sites listed under the Ramsar (Wetlands) Convention.

There are two criteria which govern the inclusion of protected areas in the UN List: size and management objectives.

The 1997 edition of the UN List includes sites in all IUCN Management Categories, from Ia/Ib through to Category VI. Protected areas which are designated Ramsar Sites, natural or mixed natural/cultural World Heritage properties, or Biosphere Reserves are included in the lists of internationally designated areas. In some cases, protected areas will appear in both the national and international lists, for example, where a national park has also been inscribed on the World Heritage List.

For the first time, the UN List includes 1,470 sites recognised as Special Protection Areas under the 1979 Birds Directive of the European Commission. This Directive imposes strict and legally enforceable obligations upon Member States of the European Union, and consequently such sites merit inclusion in the UN List.

Sites which meet the criteria for inclusion are listed by country, in alphabetic order of the English-language version of the country name. Within each country, sites are named in alphabetical order by national designation (for example, national parks, nature reserves, wildlife sanctuaries). Four additional items of information are provided for each site:

• IUCN management category,
• size (in hectares),
• year of legal establishment, and
• approximate latitude/longitude.

Such information is not necessarily complete for each country. For example, geographic co-ordinates are still lacking for many sites. The year of establishment reflects when the current legal designation was applied; in some cases this may be more recent than the original date of establishment, for example where the legal designation of a site has changed. Further information on many sites is held by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

For practical reasons, the 1997 UN List has been ordered according to an alphabetical listing of countries in English. French and Spanish speaking readers should consult the glossaries. These provide a translation of country names from French to English and from Spanish to English, respectively. To assist readers locate specific countries, an English running head is provided. Similarly, the summary data presented at the start of each country section are entitled and annotated in English only. The equivalent terms are 'Sommaire' and 'Catégorie' in French, and 'Resumen' and 'Categoría' in Spanish.

WCMC and WCPA have been collecting and managing information on protected areas for a number of years, some of which has been published. New information is also constantly being received, much of which is increasingly available via the Internet.

In preparing the 1997 UN List, staff at WCMC reviewed existing material, to revise and update the Protected Areas Database. Following this, draft lists of nationally designated protected areas were generated from the database and sent to national management agencies during 1996 with a request that they be checked, updated, and returned.

Based on the response, WCMC staff revised its Protected Areas Database, following up any queries with agencies in the countries concerned, or with members of WCPA. Copies of the revised lists were then sent to the WCPA Regional Vice-Chairs for review, as well as to the IUCN Protected Areas Programme. For most countries, information collected reflects the status of protected areas up to the end of 1996, but there are some countries for which 1997 data subsequently became available and these have been incorporated in this edition.

A total of 512 management agencies were contacted and requested to review the appropriate list of protected areas. In the case of federal nations, for example the United States, requests were sent to individual state authorities. In instances where more than one agency is responsible for protected areas, each agency was contacted. In total, 190 responses were received from 180 agencies. In the event that no information was received from official sources, data were taken, where possible, from published material and other sources.

Part of the information gathering exercise included providing summary text to each agency briefly describing the IUCN Management Category System, with a request that the appropriate category be applied to each designation or site. Categories assigned by management agencies were reviewed by WCMC, and, in cases of uncertainty or disagreement, WCPA made the final decision as to the most appropriate category for a given designation or site.

The global system of protected areas is changing rapidly: new sites are created, existing boundaries are revised and some sites are destroyed through industrial development, shifting agriculture, natural disasters or civil strife.

Growth in the number and extent of sites is an important but insufficient measure of the adequacy of the protected areas network. There is also the issue of management effectiveness. Two primary questions arise concerning the effectiveness of protected areas in meeting conservation objectives. These questions relate to the adequacy of:

• the design of the protected area system (Does the protected area network include adequate and appropriate areas of land or sea?); and
• the management of the system (Are the protected areas appropriately managed?).

Methodologies for addressing both of these questions are currently being investigated by WCPA's Task Force on Management Effectiveness (Hockings, 1997) but the systems are not yet fully developed nor the data available to support them.

Another recent study by WCMC highlights the paucity of data on investments (both financial and human resources) in protected areas (James et al., 1997). Further, the relatively scant information that is available indicates that investments in protected areas frequently fall far short of that required to sustain effective management. This is particularly true in countries with the highest biological endowment, where financial and other resources are frequently lacking. This highlights an additional qualitative dimension that currently is not fully reflected in the UN List: protected areas that exist in law may suffer from ineffective management due to inadequate investment and other factors. This phenomenon is sometime referred to as the 'paper park syndrome'. The Convention on Biological Diversity offers a mechanism to improve information on this important subject, as States party to the Convention are obliged to produce national reports on implementation, part of which will include data on investments in conservation.

The breadth of information included within the UN List has increased progressively and now includes, for example, areas managed by the forestry sector for the conservation of biodiversity. However, further work is needed to give proper recognition to the conservation activities of other sectors, such as privately protected areas and lands reserved for indigenous peoples. A review by WCMC of private sector conservation in eastern and southern Africa indicates a significant contribution (Watkins and Green, in press). In South Africa, for example, private protected areas cover a greater extent than government established reserves. In Kenya, private reserves account for at least 25% of the national protected areas network. It is hoped that, in due course, future editions of the UN List will comprehensively cover the private protected areas estate.

Consideration is also being given to the inclusion of visitor use data in future editions of the UN List. This will necessitate the adoption of common standards in recording visitor use and the routine collection of such data by protected areas management agencies. WCPA's Task Force on Tourism and Protected Areas and WCMC are already planning to pilot this initiative.

All sites meeting IUCN's protected area definition are classified according to six protected area management categories, defined by IUCN-WCPA (Box 1). Nationally designated sites are allocated to the most appropriate IUCN Management Category, normally on the basis of legally defined management objectives. The application of a management category is not a commentary upon the effectiveness with which these objectives are achieved in practice.

A major undertaking, completed as part of the preparation for this edition of the UN List, has been the application of the new IUCN Management Categories. This system was introduced by WCPA in 1994, at the time of the publication of the 1993 United Nations list of National Parks and Protected Areas, but too late to be adopted for that edition.

Application of the new Management Categories system has been a lengthy and challenging process, requiring the management objectives of each national designation to be reviewed in relation to the criteria and guidelines established for the application of the new categories.

In the case of European countries, a different mechanism was used to collect information. A collaborative partnership was formed between the Council of Europe, the European Environment Agency (EEA) and WCMC whereby the three organisations agreed to integrate their existing protected areas databases into a Common Database of Designated Areas in Europe. This is currently maintained at WCMC as part of WCMC's global Protected Areas Database, and kept up to date using information provided by EEA Member State National Reference Centres, via their respective National Contact Points. The EEA's Topic Centre for Nature Conservation is directly involved in the data validation and updating process. This initiative has resulted in more comprehensive data becoming available for European protected areas, and is reflected in this edition of the UN List.

Compilation of the UN List provides the key mechanism by which the WCMC global Protected Areas Database is maintained on a regular basis, and the UN List itself is the principal publication generated from it. In addition, there are numerous other uses to which the database can be put, both by WCMC and by many other institutions and individuals.

Two recent WCMC projects illustrate some of the ways this global Protected Areas Database has been utilised. The WCMC report Biodiversity Conservation in the Tropics (WCMC, 1997) provides an assessment of the extent to which habitats in the tropics are protected, and provides guidance on prioritising conservation action from global and national perspectives. The World Bank-funded Protected Areas Systems Review of the Indomalayan Realm (ABC, 1997) also drew heavily on the Protected Areas Database to identify key areas in South and South-east Asia that are under-represented in protected areas.

Use of the Protected Areas Database by third parties includes the World Resources Institute which biennially publishes summary statistics on protected areas in its World Resources reports.

WWF's campaign 'Forests for Life' is promoting a target of 10% of the world's forests to be protected. Progress towards this target is being monitored on the basis of information managed within the WCMC Protected Areas Database.