2nd International Workshop on Conservation Biology

Parks, People, Planet: protected areas in the next decade

Not scheduled

UP FAMNIT, Koper, Slovenia

Speaker

Dr Andrej Sovinc (IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas)

Description

The IUCN World Parks Congress (WPC) is a major form for advancing global protected area policy and practice. The 6th Congress was held in November 2014 in Sydney, Australia. With its theme 'Parks, People, Planet: Inspiring Solutions', the Congress discussed ways to find better and fairer ways to conserve natural and cultural diversity, involving governments, businesses and citizens in establishing and managing protected areas, inspire people around the world and across generations to reconnect with nature and demonstrate natural solutions to our planet's challenges, such as climate change, health, food and water security. The presentation will highlight major WPC outcomes, present orientations on how to reach conservation goals and effectively protect biodiversity, address the role of protected areas in mitigation and adaptation to climate change, role of protected areas in securing people’s health, importance of ecosystem services provided by protected areas, challenging development goals, demonstrating different governance types, including engagement of indigenous people in protected area establishment and management issues and strengthening the role of youth in conservation. Four Cross-cutting Themes will also be presenting, including marine protected areas, capacity building, World Heritage and a new social compact for just conservation. The IUCN World Parks Congress is the decade's most important forum to identify and communicate inspiring solutions involving protected areas for some of the world's most pressing global challenges. Innovative and transformative approaches that address new challenges for protected areas are embraced in The Promise of Sydney, not an action plan for protected areas but rather a platform for commitments offering a broad constituency to make their own promises towards achieving effective conservation and sustainable development goals.