Protected area management

This publication provides a much needed and timely tool to assist in the collective effort to find new and better solutions to address the various threats to the marine biological diversity and productivity. It provides evidence-based recommendations on improving and accelerating actions on delivering ocean protection and management through marine protected areas and facilitates the sharing of experiences and lessons learned.

The World Heritage Convention is a principal protection mechanism available to recognise and protect the very best marine sites around the globe. A key step to targeted application of the Convention has now been made by the creation of the Bahrain Action Plan for marine World Heritage.

The book illustrates that sacred natural sites, although often under threat, exist within and outside formally recognised protected areas, heritage sites. Sacred natural sites may well be some of the last strongholds for building resilient networks of connected landscapes. They also form important nodes for maintaining a dynamic socio-cultural fabric in the face of global change.

Pour qu’un développement soit durable, il convient d’isoler certaines terres et de les déclarer zones protégées. Ces zones, qui comprennent les parcs nationaux, représentent une contribution importante pour l’humanité en ce sens qu’elles sauvegardent le patrimoine naturel et culturel au bénéfice des peuples eux-mêmes et qu’elles assurent l’équilibre écologique au fur et à mesure de l’accroissement de la population mondiale.

Les Aires Marines Protégées (AMPs) d’Afrique de l’Ouest tiennent enfin, avec ce guide pratique, leur outil d’émancipation. Il est temps de structurer les approches et passer à la vitesse supérieure en matière de gouvernance partagée et gestion conjointe des aires protégées. Tous ceux qui s’intéressent de près ou de loin aux AMPs—communautés, individus, organisations gouvernementales ou non— vont pouvoir se situer ici dans leur processus de gouvernance.

The Global Study into management effectiveness evaluation was conducted between late 2005 and 2007. In cooperation with many people across the world, we aimed to strengthen the management of protected areas by compiling the existing work on management effectiveness evaluation, reviewing methodologies, finding patterns and common themes in evaluation results, and investigating the most important factors leading to effective management.

In this supplementary report, we summarise a selection of methodologies that have been used in different regions around the world for different purposes. References are given wherever possible for the reader to find more details where desired. However, some of the methodologies were not published and information on them is difficult to obtain.

Presents different methodologies for learning how to effectively manage protected areas from indicators and variables of distinct fields such as administration and planning and the knowledge generated. Focuses on applications in protected areas of Latin America.

Using the category system in force (IUCN, 1994), this document analyses the bestowal of IUCN category statuses and proposes a systematic procedure for making such assignments. A number of selected pilot cases from around the world where this procedure has been used are discussed.