PoWPA Activity 2.1.2
Recognize and promote a broad set of protected area governance types related to their potential for achieving biodiversity conservation goals in accordance with the Convention, which may include areas conserved by indigenous and local communities and private nature reserves. The promotion of these areas should be by legal and/or policy, financial and community mechanisms.IUCN recognises that protected areas need a range of different management approaches and classifies these through a six-part category system. Intensity of natural resource use and human settlement varies, from Category I strictly protected reserves where human presence is carefully controlled, to Category V protected landscapes and seascapes where people continue to live and use natural resources in management systems that are broadly compatible with conservation. Identifying a suitable mix of management approaches within a protected area system is a critically important part of the planning process. IUCN also stresses that a full range of ownership and governance options may be appropriate in a protected area system, although national protected areas legislation sometimes does not provide for private or communal property to exist within protected areas. Today, in many countries local communities are rightly insisting on a role in determining management policies. A suggested first step in this process is to carry out a national review of the status, needs and mechanisms for involving stakeholders in protected areas policy. The extent to which this is necessary will depend on management approaches within existing protected areas. In particular, reviews can consider a range of innovative approaches to protected area management, including: Government-managed protected areas: state management at national or local level, occasionally delegated to an NGO. Co-management or collaborative management: a variety of options for involving local communities in management, ranging from active consultation, to consensus-seeking, negotiating and sharing responsibility to in some cases transferring management responsibility to communities. Community-conserved areas: natural or modified ecosystems containing significant biodiversity, ecological services and cultural values, voluntarily conserved by indigenous, mobile and local communities through customary laws or other effective means. Some of these may be official protected areas as recognized by the CBD and IUCN; others may be better regarded as compatible management systems suitable for buffer zones and corridors around protected areas or in other parts of the landscape or seascape. Private protected areas: protected areas managed by private individuals, companies or trusts. Some countries recognize such areas in law and impose the same restrictions on these as state protected areas (e.g. Brazil), or even have state agencies running protected areas on private land (e.g., Finland through regional environment centres). Others remain uncertain about how to ensure their long-term security or to represent them within the protected area system.
Reviews of governance types can draw on a range of existing materials and approaches that need to be applied to the particular situation within a country and reflect the various principles outlined within the PoWPA. There are several emerging lessons in protected area governance (Graham et al., 2003; Pansky, 2005), including: No single governance structure will be sufficient for meeting the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity – a plurality of governance structures will likely be needed. A diverse set of different governance types across the protected area systems can fill ecological gaps, address complex issues such as landscape connectivity, and encourage higher levels of societal engagement in protected area management. Traditional knowledge and practices are increasingly vulnerable to international management paradigms, and should be safeguarded through governance agreements. Cooperation across different governance types will be increasingly important to address large-scale conservation issues, but such models are scarce and can be fraught with political challenges. Although it is easy to identify broad principles of good governance, local application requires sensitivity and flexibility. Rapid global changes in technology (e.g., remote sensing), and in concepts of social participation in governmental processes, are driving rapid changes in governance toward devolution, greater accountability, and consensus decision-making models. Effective and equitable sharing of benefits is likely to be the most politically challenging aspect of protected area governance, especially where there are multiple stakeholder groups with complex tenure and use rights. Good governance alone is an insufficient precondition of effective management; adequate resources and a supportive policy environment are equally important. Good governance requires clear legal and operational frameworks, including a delineation of stakeholders’ rights and responsibilities, and a recognition of community and indigenous tenure and use rights.
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