Kenton Miller Award Programme

Protecting the Planet newsletter (August 2018)

As the northern hemisphere returns to work and study, this edition of Protecting the Planet demonstrates that the southern hemisphere has been highly productive. Despite recent bad news in Brazil, including the loss by fire of the priceless 200-year old collections in the National Museum, conservation activities on the ground have been proceeding apace. Privately protected areas constitute 48% of Brazil’s protected area system, and a recent conference and focus on these areas has indicated how important they are and how they engage vital partners in conservation. There’s news also of the largest of these covering 188,000 ha in the Pantanal.

This issue also notes the publication of a special edition of PARKS, with a focus on “other effective area-based conservation measures”. In this issue, the question of how OECMs differ from privately protected areas is discussed, and good examples are given of work going on across Latin America and globally to put in place a useful definition and guidance in advance of the biodiversity conference (COP14) in Egypt in November 2018.

The issue also picks up some of the threads from the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain, including the recent intervention of  12-year old Madison Pearl from Belize who travelled there to carry a message regarding the Belize Barrier Reef, just removed from the World Heritage in Danger list. A new IUCN publication on assessing the benefits of world heritage sites, other protected areas and key biodiversity areas in now available. All the updates are available here.

On 22 – 23 February 2018, participants at the 'Safeguarding space for nature and securing our future: developing a post-2020 strategy' Symposium discussed the future of spatial planning and policy. The symposium was hosted by the Zoological Society of London and the National Geographic Society, in partnership with IUCN, BirdLife International/RSPB, the UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In order to stem the rate of biodiversity loss, governments have committed to protect at least 17% of land and freshwater and 10% of our oceans by 2020, by adopting a Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).  Areas that are protected should be areas important for biodiversity and ecosystem services, in systems of effective, equitable and ecologically connected protected and conserved areas.  This year, data suggests that we are close to conserving 15% of land, and 7% of the ocean. Yet, data about whether the sites are effectively managed, equitably governed and ecologically connected, is limited.

Read more: https://www.iucn.org/news/protected-areas/201804/space-nature-symposium-whats-next 

Links:

• Full article