Recommendation 10
Policy Linkages between Relevant International Conventions and Programmes in Integrating Protected Areas in the Wider Landscape/Seascape

The Plan of Implementation of the WSSD calls for a significant reduction in the loss of biodiversity by the year 2010, and notes the need for protected areas and ecological networks to achieve this goal.

Article 8 (a) of the Convention on Biological Diversity calls upon Parties to establish a system of protected areas as part of the suite of actions needed to conserve biodiversity and Article 8 (e) calls upon Parties to promote environmentally sound sustainable development in areas adjacent to these Protected Areas with the view to enhancing their protection of biodiversity.

A number of global and regional conventions and programmes specifically address protected area issues.

At global level:

• The Ramsar Wetlands Convention makes provision for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and includes provision for the establishment of protected wetlands, which should be managed with an integrated approach within the larger land/seascape.

• The World Heritage Convention, through their inscription on the World Heritage List, calls on Parties to recognise their duty to protect those Sites, to ensure adequate legal protection is afforded such sites to promote their outstanding universal value, satisfy the condition of ecological integrity, and ensure they are effectively managed; and

• The UNESCO-MAB World Network of Biosphere Reserves, through a focus on combining conservation, development and research/education objectives, by applying a zonation system, which includes a protected core area, a surrounding buffer zone, and an outer transition area, which may be integrated into regional planning.

Each of these instruments includes processes to review the status of Protected Areas and to identify them as threatened or dysfunctional.
Likewise, the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals serves to protect migratory species, and while Protected Areas are not expressly noted in the Convention text, nonetheless Protected Areas are seen as being crucial to achieve its goals.

With these points in mind participants in the “Linkages in the landscape and seascape” Workshop Stream concluded that these instruments can be use to link protected areas with the wider land/seascape.

Therefore, PARTICIPANTS in the Stream on Linkages in the Landscape/Seascape at the Vth World Parks Congress, in Durban, South Africa (8-17 September 2003):

RECOMMEND that:

1. Governments, local and indigenous communities, civil society and NGOs maintain and strengthen their involvement with the existing international instruments and pursue opportunities to harmonize their implementation in relation to PAs identification and management;

2. Governments, local and indigenous communities, civil society and NGOs ensure consistency of their contributions to the above mentioned international instruments with their contributions to implementing the plan of action of the WSSD, and in the framework of the Articles of the CBD in light of the conceptual integration offered by the Ecosystem Approach as adopted by the CoP to the CBD;

3. Governments, local and indigenous communities, civil society and NGOs working in Protected Areas, and surrounding areas promoting sustainable development as contemplated under the World Network of MAB Biosphere Reserves, designated under these international instruments, make full use of the linkages between them, and ensure that actions are also coordinated with activities in the surrounding land/seascape;

4. The governing bodies of relevant international conventions and programmes, as a means to achieve their conservation objectives, promote the establishment and maintenance of linkages in the Land/Seascape in their implementation plans or programmes;

5. The governing bodies of the MEAS/Programmes, as a means to achieve their conservation objectives, promote the establishment and maintenance of linkages in the land/seascape in their implementation plans/programmes; and

6. Recommend that sufficient financial resources be made available to governments, local communities, indigenous people, civil society, and NGOs who demonstrate need for participating in discussions pertaining to international conventions and other instruments.

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