The unique conditions of each country call for different approaches to preparing a protected area system plan, but the following guidelines can help any country.

Objectives and Priorities

• Establish national objectives for the protected area system through broad-based participation and debate.
• Establish specific objectives for each protected area in the system, responding to input from all affected institutions and groups. Spell out the kinds of development permissible in each category of protected area.
• Identify and establish priorities for better managing existing protected areas, as well as for creating new areas. Identify and establish priorities for research and resource needs, including personnel, funding, training, and materials.

Design Elements

• Prepare or adopt a classification system of biogeographical units covering freshwater, coastal, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems.
• Map the distribution of biogeographical units, species of particular concern, human populations, and existing protected areas.
• Define options for expanding protected area systems using buffer zones, corridors, private land easements, resource management policies, or other options outside the control of area management agencies.
• Determine the most cost-effective means of achieving the protected area system objectives.

Science and Information

• Establish a monitoring system, based on information collected during planning for the whole protected area network, to measure the network's effectiveness.
• Develop an explicit plan to manage key species (keystone or indicator species or species of particular economic or aesthetic value); include population and area requirements. Use this analysis to determine which habitats and species are insufficiently protected.
• Include a strategy for promoting the system plan to government agencies, the general public, and non-governmental organizations.

Links to Surrounding Lands and Other Sectors

• Promote the inclusion of protected areas in national land-use policy.
• Use the system-wide planning process to involve all sectors that contribute to or benefit from protected areas.
• Quantify direct and indirect benefits, and ensure that local communities are deriving benefits from the system.

Institutional Issues and International Linkages

• Review legal and institutional systems and identify the changes needed to achieve national conservation objectives, including measures to increase local people's responsibility for protected area management.
• Identify areas to be recognized under international programs and agreements.
• Establish mechanisms for periodically reviewing and modifying the system-wide plan.