Synopsis

Distributed for comment at the 5th World Parks Congress, this guide seeks to help protected area managers, policy makers, and stakeholders learn to deal with the factors of global change that will have growing impacts on their areas in the coming decades.

Executive Summary

IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) is implementing a special project: Ecosystems, Protected Areas, and People. During this first phase, the aim is to help protected area managers, policy makers, and stakeholders learn to deal with factors of global change that will have growing impacts on their areas in the coming decades.

The project will include a report on "options and guidelines" for use by area managers and protected area leaders. The draft Guide to the report will be peer reviewed at the 5th World Parks Congress.

This guide summarizes the full volume: Securing Protected Areas in the Face of Global Change: Options and guidelines which will be published in late 2003.

The draft full report together with this summary will be provided to the Convention on Biological Diversity as a contribution from WCPA and this Congress to the development of the CBD's program of work on protected areas, which is likely to be agreed upon at the 7th Convention of the Parties (COP 7), next year. Subsequently, these reports will be uploaded onto IUCN/WCPA's new Protected Areas Learning Network (PALNet).