Protected Area Management for the Twenty-First Century ICPL

The designation of Protected Areas is increasing at a faster rate than ever before. There are now over 102,000 such areas, covering around 12% of the Earth's land surface. However, just at a time when their values are of increasing importance to humankind, many of these areas are facing their greatest ever challenges, even threats to their very existence.

In response to these threats and acknowledging that these special areas can only achieve their conservation objectives within a context of political support and local acceptability, a new management paradigm has gained global recognition over recent years. Its key message is that in order to be effective, the management of our Protected Areas must be based on a collaborative approach, with local communities and other stakeholders at the very core of management.

ICPL takes its name from IUCN - The World Conservation Union's Category V protected areas - namely 'Protected Landscapes'. These Protected Landscapes offer a management model that supports the new paradigm in having as its key focus the inter-relationship between nature and people. It is an inclusive and integrated approach where local communities are treated as central to the future of the area, and where management is directed at enabling them to share in both the responsibility and the benefits of designation. The goal is to safeguard and enhance the diversity of biological and cultural resources within viable programmes of social and economic development.

Further to all of this, however, it is becoming increasingly evident that with appropriate political recognition and support, protected areas of all kinds can contribute in some way to our efforts to address the UN Millennium Development Goals, mitigate the impacts of climate change, support environmental and food security; and develop good practice in local governance. Their role in the 21st century is therefore much wider and more significant than it has ever been in the past; our need to manage them effectively is equally much greater and more challenging than it has been in the past; and our responsibility to ensure that governments understand and support this wider role is fundamental to the future well-being of our planet and its people.

Critically, in order to fulfil this wider role, protected area management in the Twenty-first Century needs to build on to the traditional experience and knowledge of its professionals, a new set of skills and expertise to enable them to work effectively and sensitively with, through, and for local people; across a wide range of disciplines; and in an integrated way with national strategies for sustainable development.

It is ICPL's global vision to promote this new approach to protected area management and to offer services to assist in its implementation.