Global Study on Protected Areas Management Effectiveness ²

The Global Study of protected area management effectiveness was conceived to address the lack of standardisation of approaches to measuring management effectiveness around the world, and the absence of a compiled set of completed assessments. The work developed from a call from practitioners for systems to be ‘harmonised’, and from the call from international organisations and conventions such as the CBD for global reporting on management effectiveness, rather than just protected area coverage.

The major goal of the Global Study is:

"To strengthen management of protected areas by assembling the good work on this subject, helping the conservation community to share experiences and to find common themes in the study results"

The stated objectives of the Global Study are to:

1. Inventory, collect and collate available information from assessment systems, individual park assessments and other evaluations of management effectiveness that have been undertaken in protected areas.
2. Gain an understanding of most appropriate methodologies for different situations and protected area systems.
3. Gain as wide a picture as possible of status of parks, key threats, factors influencing effectiveness of management and necessary changes to management strategies and approaches.
4. Analyse most useful and commonly used indicators for assessing management effectiveness of protected areas (i.e. what indicators are most reliable predictors of overall effectiveness).
5. Develop a system for integration of available management effectiveness information into the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

Results

The Global Study has listed, and where possible assembled and analysed, all studies of management effectiveness that can be located around the world, drawing on information from the conservation community, NGOs and park management agencies.

This material is being analysed and it is expected that these analyses will help to understand more about what factors are essential to good management, and to recommend ways to maximize the benefits obtained from conducting evaluations of management.

Ultimately, it is hoped that by sharing experiences and identifying common issues, challenges, and ‘best practice’, the management effectiveness of protected areas will be strengthened around the world.

Click here for more information and publications on the Global Study

Click here to search the ME database

² The global study is co-funded by the University of Queensland in Australia, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), under the auspices of the IUCN World Commission for Protected Areas (WCPA). The study works in close cooperation with other organisations including the World Bank (WB), Global Environment Fund (GEF) and United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). It is being led by Dr Marc Hockings, Vice-Chair (Science, Knowledge and Management of Protected Areas) IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas.