UN List of Protected Areas

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United Nations List of Protected Areas from 2003

The UN List of Protected Areas ( German : UN list of protected areas ) is a 1962 by the United Nations initiated and by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources list of all protected areas in the world continuously maintained (IUCN). The 13th version of the list from 2003 - currently still up-to-date - was created in cooperation with the IUCN and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center , which is subordinate to the UN via UNEP .

history

prehistory

The history of the UN List of Protected Areas goes back to 1959. At the 27th session of the UN Economic and Social Council , the importance of national parks and comparable reserves for mankind was emphasized and a wise use of these protected areas was recommended by resolution (No. 713).

From June 30th to July 7th, 1962, the first World Conference on National Parks of the IUCN took place in Seattle , USA . The aim of this conference was to achieve better international support for national parks . In addition to the main topics: " Influence of humans on the animal world ", " Extinction of species ", " the religious and aesthetic significance of certain parks and the wilderness ", " the role of national parks in scientific studies ", " the economic benefits of tourism ", " International monitoring of nature parks across national borders " and " the practical problem of a park administration ", it was decided to hold this conference every ten years and to draw up a list of all protected areas.

Decision making

In December 1962, the 16th General Assembly of the Economic Development and Nature Conservation of the United Nations followed. After the preparatory work of the past three years, the delegates of this assembly resolved in a resolution to create a United Nations List of National Parks and Equivalent Reserves (German: UN List of National Parks and Equivalent Protected Areas ). The IUCN played its part in all of these decisions and then took responsibility for the creation and maintenance of such a list for the next 20 years. The list, first drawn up in 1962, comprised just over 1,000 protected areas.

Further course

1966, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1980 was followed by other versions, created by the Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA) (German: Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas ), which was established by the IUCN specifically for the needs of the national parks has been. At the second World Conference on National Parks , which was held in 1972 in the world's oldest national park, Yellowstone National Park , the UN list numbered a little over 1,200 registered protected areas.

In 1979 the IUCN opened an office in Cambridge , which should take care of the development of species and nature conservation . It was in this office in 1981 that the CNPPA began to set up the Protected Areas Data Unit , a database that was supposed to cope with the increasing number of protected areas and the growing amount of data and at the same time was able to make all relevant information about desired areas quickly available .

As a result of this development work and the corporation between the IUCN and the UNEP, the 8th version of the UN Protected Areas was published in 1982 at the World Conference on National Parks in Bali , Indonesia, under the name UN List of Protected Areas , which is still valid today . With this new list, the protected areas were categorized according to IUCN management categories and the restriction to minimum size was lifted. The inclusion in the UN list also took place regardless of whether the IUCN for its part had assigned a category to the respective area and thus included it in its official list or not.

The first ten versions of the list from 1962 to 1990 were published in print only. The two published versions from 1993 and 1997 were available in addition to the printed form as a web-based database, the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), which could now be queried freely.

Currently valid list

The currently valid UN List of Protected Areas was released at the fifth World Conference on National Parks , which took place in 2003 in Durban , South Africa . Two special features of this list are that for the first time, because of its size, it was no longer published in print and that for the first time a comprehensive representation of all known protected areas of the world can be found in the list. However, all data is only available online via the WDPA database or for a fee on data carriers such as CD and DVD . In print there was only information of a general nature and some prepared statistics for analysis of global trends in relation to protected areas.

The current list contains just over 102,000 areas, which cover a land area of ​​17.1 million km². With 11.5% of the earth's land area, this is an impressive result in efforts to protect nature and species. According to the report, the protected marine areas are still clearly underrepresented with only 1.64 million km².

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b See 2003 United Nations List of Protected Areas under Sources.
  2. ↑ a b c UNEP (Ed.): 2014 United Nations List of Protected Areas . 2014, ISBN 978-92-807-3417-8 ( formally incorrect ) (English, unep.org [PDF; 2.0   MB ; accessed on January 20, 2016]).
  3. ↑ VTH IUCN WORLD PARKS CONGRESS - IISD Canada - (accessed January 4, 2010)
  4. ↑ Previous World Parks Congresses . Department Environmental Affairs Republic of South Africa , archived from the original on October 2, 2006 ; accessed on January 20, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).
  5. ↑ 2003 United Nations List of Protected Areas (PDF; 1.3 MB), p. 21 and p. 27–28.