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Supporters of parklands and protected areas have cause to celebrate: new estimates find that there are now more than 102,000 national parks, wilderness reserves, heritage sites, and other protected areas around the world. All told, these parks encompass more than 18.8 million square kilometers of land, an area larger than Canada, the United States, and Germany combined.
Twenty years ago, park officials meeting at the 3rd World Parks Congress in Bali, Indonesia set an ambitious goal to increase the amount of protected land in the world from 3.5 percent to 10 percent. The latest estimates from the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Center show that we have significantly exceeded those expectations by setting aside for protection nearly 13 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial surface.
While these gains are impressive, we must also recognize that the number of unforeseen threats to protected areas is growing as well. And if we don’t act soon, our achievements may be swept away.
Since 1872, when Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, was designated, protected areas have faced problems ranging from poaching and illegal logging to fragmentation from roads and urban sprawl.
But now we have a new set of problems. Human driven global changes are jeopardizing the future of many rare species, important ecosystems, and critical resources.
For example, protected areas are now subject to the rapid spread of invasive species that degrade and displace fragile habitats. Rising global temperatures threaten to strand some plant and animal species that are unable to migrate to cooler climes. Rising sea levels threaten to inundate estuaries and other ecologically important wetland habitats. In countries from Indonesia to the United States, a drop in government support for parks and plans to privatize or decentralize promise to undermine protections.
The stakes are high. Protected areas provide crucial commodities that are vital to the livelihoods of millions of people. For example, many large metropolitan areas rely on nearby protected areas – such as forested watersheds – to store and discharge water for millions of people.
Protected areas also purify the air we breathe, provide habitat for species that we depend on (from the insects that pollinate our crops to the wild game that supports millions of families), help generate crucial topsoil, act as storehouses of biodiversity for foods and medicines, and provide numerous cultural and spiritual benefits.
Scientists, park officials, activists, and other people concerned with the welfare of the world’s protected areas will gather in Durban, South Africa in September for the 5th Parks Congress to present solutions to the challenges facing parks. Here are a number of the solutions that they will discuss:
- We must work with neighboring communities to make sure they get an equitable share of the benefits derived from parks, so that they will have a stake in protecting these areas.
- We must ensure that protected areas are actually protected. Park rangers, educators, scientists, etc. must have the resources, mandate, and authority to manage parks properly.
- We need to prioritize connecting parklands together by creating “corridors” between parks to allow species to move and adapt as they face global changes. Buffer zones around protected areas can help provide species with additional breathing room.
- The United States needs to begin taking the issue of climate change seriously. “Island” parks that are hemmed in by surrounding cities and development may see many species stranded and choked out as their climate shifts and becomes intolerable.
- In addition, the United States is one of the only countries in the world that hasn’t signed the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Signing the treaty would commit the country to work together with the rest of the world in saving biodiversity.
The problems facing parks today are increasingly global in nature, and they must be addressed in a coordinated manner if we hope to retain the integrity of the world’s protected areas. (WRI Features, 650 words)