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September 2007
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Supporting Country Action to Address Gaps in Protected Area Management
“Community-based management approaches to protected areas produce huge
social benefits,” says UNDP-GEF’s new Executive Coordinator Yannick Glemarec. “They can boost livelihoods, social development, and education, along with empowering such groups as women, youths, and indigenous people.”
Well planned and managed protected area networks are widely recognized as the best way to conserve biological diversity, achieve sustainable development, and adapt to climate change. However, many already established protected areas are still not meeting their biodiversity conservation objectives, have insufficient management systems, or have only limited participation by local communities.
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In response, the Conference to the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted in 2004 a Programme of Work on Protected Areas with ambitious goals and time-bound targets. Its list of critical activities include:
- Establishing and strengthening PA systems at national and regional levels
- Integrating them into a global network
- Expanding conservation activities into broader landscapes, seascapes, and other sectors to maintain ecological structure and function
- Providing an enabling policy environment for PAs
- Building capacity and ensuring financial sustainability
A newly approved GEF/UNDP project, Supporting Country Action on the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas, is designed to redress gaps in the implementation of critical activities in the UNDP-GEF protected area portfolio according to the CBD’s timetable. The timetable calls for appropriate systems to be in place for terrestrial protected areas by 2010 and marine protected areas by 2012, and for biodiversity protection to be extended beyond individual sites into adjacent areas and the general landscape and seascape.
The project has been designed to help countries—particularly Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States, who will receive at least 50 percent of the project’s funding—fill short-term needs in their protected area activities, which are not addressed by other national projects, including those supported by GEF, other donors, and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The available funding will allow around 35 awards of up to $250,000 each to be made to countries. An International Technical Review Committee—comprised of representatives from GEF, UNDP, UNEP, the CBD, regional representatives from the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, and international NGOs—will vet the applications.
At the same time two new useful tools have been designed to assist and train staff working on protect area projects:
- Financial Sustainability Scorecard for National Systems of Protected Areas helps countries compile the financial data needed to determine costs, revenues, and financing gaps for protected areas in current and future years as well as analyze the governance and institutional frames, business planning, and revenue generation needed to create fully functioning financial systems for the sites.
- Supporting Country Action on the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas guides applicant countries through the application process, including the compilation of an Initial Gap Analysis, a list of eligible activities, selection criteria, monitoring and reporting requirements, and useful lists. Examples and templates of the forms used in the application process are provided together with detailed advice on completing them.
For more information on the Financial Sustainability Scorecard for National Systems of Protected Areas visit:
http://www.undp.org/gef/05/documents/publications/FinancialScored.pdf
For more information on the Supporting Country Action on the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas visit:
http://www.undp.org/gef/05/documents/publications/InfoKit_for_Countries.pdf |
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