IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA)

This thematic study focuses on the contribution the World Heritage Convention can make to wilderness conservation around the world. It provides pragmatic guidance to the Convention and its many partners for strengthening protection of wilderness by promoting the profound linkages between culture and wild nature.

Visitors to parks and protected areas impact at many levels: political, economic, social and ecological. To ensure effective park management for increasing visitor numbers, good quality global data on visitor use is necessary. This manual describes terms, approaches and techniques for gathering information about public use of parks and protected areas.

The world’s climate is changing rapidly and protected areas are an increasingly important component of national and international climate change adaptation strategies. These guidelines articulate essential elements for adaptation planning and implementation, and it describes additional resources that site managers can use right away.

This background paper surveys international experience in the development and use of mechanisms to establish and manage connectivity conservation. Specifically it seeks to provide an understanding of the range of mechanisms including laws, regulations, and other regulatory instruments and agreements which have been used in other countries to support connectivity conservation.

PANORAMA is a partnership initiative to facilitate learning from success in conservation. It promotes examples of inspiring solutions that showcase how nature conservation can benefit society. PANORAMA enables the wider application of such solutions through cross-sectoral global learning and exchange. Through a modular case study format, solutions are dissected into their replicable “building blocks”.

The purpose of these first-ever international Guidelines for managing wilderness (Category 1b) has been to impress upon you the challenges involved in managing wilderness, while also clarifying the essential techniques, protocols, and mindset required of a good, efficient, adaptable, and visionary manager. 

The ocean is a major player in the regulation of the world’s climate system. The purpose of the report is to provide information to underpin the outcomes of COP21 and in particular to demonstrate the importance of the role of MPAs in climate change adaptation and mitigation. To do this the report brings together scientific information on how MPAs can help to solve climate change issues in coastal and ocean ecosystems.

This document recounts the authors’ experience in participatory conservation processes that seek terrestrial biodiversity connectivity. It synthesizes at least a decade of research and practice. Its documentation of this experience hopefully can contribute to the conservation and restoration of ecological connectivity in other parts of Latin America and the world.