IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA)

The South Asia Regional Action Plan was prepared through a collective effort by all countries in the region, and represents an agreed view of regional priorities, addressing such topics as training, transboundary protected areas and community involvements in protected areas management. The plan begins with an overview of protected areas in the region, including numbers, coverage, policies and legislation, administration and threats.

In 1994, IUCN launched Parks for life: Action for Protected Areas in Europe - a plan devised by IUCN with 200 partners to ensure an adequate, effective and well-managed network of protected areas in Europe. In November 1997, some 150 protected area experts from 34 countries met to review progress and chart a course for future work.

Assesses the role of the MAB Programme in promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, based on the outcome of a workshop held at the 1st World Conservation Congress, 1996. Included are several key papers which demonstrate experiences from around the world. The workshop illustrates that although there is no single formula by which the biosphere reserves concept can be successfully translated from theory into practice, it is an increasingly important concept

A system plan is the design of a total reserve system covering the full range of ecosystems and communities found in a particular country, identifying the range of purposes of protected areas and the relationships among the system components (i.e. individual areas, protected areas and other land uses), and different sectors and levels of society.

This new edition reveals a global network of over 30,000 protected areas designated under national legislation which covers 13.2 million square kilometres of land, freshwater and sea, an area larger than Canada, and accounts for nearly 8 per cent of the world's land area, as well as 1.5 million square kilometres of sea.