April 9, 2003
INTERVIEW WITH ISHWARAN NATARAJAN, CHIEF OF THE NATURAL HERITAGE SECTION, UNESCO WEORLD HERITAGE CONVENTION

Dr Ishwaran Natarajan, Chief of the Natural Heritage Section, UNESCO World Heritage Convention has been with UNESCO for the past 16 years and has held different positions of prestige. Here, in an in-depth conversation with Suvira Srivastav, he dwells on the long-term plans of his organization for India.

India is one of the 12 biodiversity hotspots in the world but it just has a few sites designated under the Natural Heritage section of the World Heritage, UNESCO. Why is that so?

Five sites from Indian - national parks at Manas, Kaziranga, Sundarbans, Keoladeo (Bharatpur), and Nanda Devi - were nominated and included in UNESCO's World Heritage List in the 1980s, a time predating the Rio Conference when notions like 'biodiversity hot spots' were not recognized. Since the last set of Indian protected areas was inscribed on the List (Sundarbans and Nanda Devi in 1987), no new sites have been successfully nominated for designation as World Heritage Sites. Various nominations submitted by India, like the Rann of Kutch, the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, and Silent Valley National Park, were returned either for re-consideration, or for expanding the nominated area or, because the case for '"outstanding universal value' had not been adequately projected. However, I feel that India has the potential for successfully nominating many more of its nature reserves as World Heritage Sites.

What are UNESCO's future plans for developing countries like India?

UNESCO, as a whole, cooperates with India in many areas of its work. Speaking of natural heritage, I think India, despite being frequently referred to as a 'developing country', has considerable success stories to tell. The success of rhino conservation in Assam is one example. It also has a highly dedicated cadre of protected area professionals whose commitment and services to protecting the nation's biodiversity must be better recognized and rewarded. Our plans for cooperation with India at present focus on how the prestige of the World Heritage label could be used to show innovative ways of using an international Convention to enhance the protection of biodiversity and raise the image of protected areas professionals in India.

Do you foresee active assessment and participatory role for NGOs in these plans?

Yes, we do believe that the future of protected area management in India and other 'megadiversity nations' will depend on capacity development based on government-NGO alliances and public-private partnerships. We feel that the role of NGOs is not only in carrying out active assessments of the potential for prospective sites to meet World Heritage criteria and conditions and other related studies and analyses. NGOs should become long-term, active partners in supporting the building protected area infrastructure and capacity and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with government to face the numerous challenges faced by the protected area management profession.
Financing protected areas management and tools, funding R&D activities, and supporting community initiatives-these are the three major requirements of wilderness areas across the globe.

How does your organization intend to address these?

We are increasingly trying to partner with philanthropic foundations, bilateral and multilateral donors, and a variety of other partners to design, develop, and launch country-level World Heritage Biodiversity Programmes where these concerns could be addressed in a systematic way over the medium to long terms. We have just started a project, financed by a planning grant of $ 50 400 provided by the UN Foundation, to design such a programme for India. We are cooperating with India's Ministry of Environment and Forests as well as a number of institutions and NGOs to develop this programme. Focusing on designated and potential World Heritage Sites in India, the programme will try to develop conservation financing schemes, research and development cooperation to enhance management effectiveness of protected areas, and collaboration with a number of donors and grass-roots organizations to design and launch community-based projects that will directly benefit protected area management and biodiversity conservation.

The clock has started ticking for the World Parks Congress 2003. What do you hope to achieve from this event?

The international steering committee for World parks Congress has already recognized world heritage as one of the cross-cutting themes. We are working with the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) and other partners to convene several preparatory activities where world heritage contributions to substantive stream topics of the Congress, such as conservation financing and management effectiveness, could be analysed and specific publications and products developed for showcasing at the Congress. We also intend to find resources to sponsor a significant number of World Natural Heritage Site personnel to attend the Congress and will probably have special events during the Congress around the world heritage theme and related subject.

What are the lessons learnt from the WSSD (World Summit on Sustainable Development), the much-hyped mega event on environment and sustainable development?

Mega events, like the WSSD and the World Parks Congress (the principal mega event for protected area professionals that will be convened in Durban, South Africa, in September 2003), are important occasions for networking and developing new ideas and insights. What we need to do, as many of the leading voices at WSSD repeatedly emphasized during its sessions, is to put an equal focus on converting those networks, insights, and ideas into action and make detectable improvements in actual lives of people and ground realities. We hope that World Heritage Sites could become priorities for such pilot actions and projects for the international community drive to promote biodiversity conservation and effective protected area management. What mega events should force us to take up is targeted and committed action to change things on the ground in the intervening period between these mega events. In this way, such events become useful and necessary forums for exchanging experience and learning lessons.

What role will UNESCO World Heritage play in the World Parks Congress?

In addition to my responses to a related question above, let me say that the UNESCO World Heritage Centre places a very high importance on the successful outcome of this event. The main architects of the Congress, namely IUCN and its World Commission on Protected Areas, are partners and principal technical advisors to the World Heritage Centre and the World Heritage Committee. So we will support IUCN in all possible ways and contribute towards making the Congress a success.

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Events

San Diego, USA, April 14-18, 2003
PROTECTING OUR DIVERSE HERITAGE: THE ROLE PF PARKS, PROTECTED AREAS AND CULTURAL SITES -"BENEFITS BEYOND BOUNDARIES" IN NORTH AMERICA

The world of protected areas has changed dramatically since Yellowstone was established as the first national park in 1872. And the pace of change seems to have accelerated since the 1992 World Parks Congress in Caracas, Venezuela.

But what are the major changes affecting protected areas in the past decade? And what will be the major challenges in the future? These are key questions which WCPA members and their colleagues in Canada, U.S. and Mexico will be addressing in a series of workshops on the theme of "Benefits beyond Boundaries" in the run-up to the 2003 IUCN World Parks Congress in Durban.

The first workshop will be held in Ottawa on April 3rd in collaboration with the Canadian Committee for IUCN. There will be information presentations on recent work by the National Round Table on Environment and the Economy and by the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation followed by a range of panel presentations and workshop discussions.

On April 17th, for the first time ever, the heads of the three national park agencies from Canada, U.S. and Mexico will share the platform. This WCPA session is being presented as part of "Protecting Our Diverse Heritage," (see http://www.georgewright.org/2003.html) the joint conference of the George Wright Society and the U.S. National Park Service in San Diego, California.

The third WCPA workshop will be held on May 12th in Victoria, B.C. as part of the fifth International SAMPAA Conference "Making Ecosystem Based Management Work" (http://www.sampaa.org/sampaa_conference.htm). Panel presentations will bring perspectives from Aboriginal people, the private sector, marine protected areas, State parks, and NGO's with speakers from all three countries.

For information on these WCPA workshops, or if you want to contribute to the discussion on "Benefits Beyond Boundaries" in North America, please contact Bruce Amos (bruce.amos@rogers.com).