Using the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas to promote conservation impact through marine protected areas

Abstract

With the number of marine protected areas (MPAs) growing rapidly and progress being made towards protecting 10% of the ocean, as called for by the Convention on Biological Diversity, there is equally a need to increase efforts and provide incentives for effective management of these sites. The IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas (GLPCA), a voluntary global standard that protected areas and their agencies may decide to commit to working towards, has been set up to contribute to this. Protected areas can achieve Green List status by demonstrating a certain performance level and by meeting outcomes measured against a set of defined criteria. An assured verification process is followed before sites are recognized. The GLPCA will thus encourage and identify those protected areas (both terrestrial and marine) that are effectively managed, have equitable governance and achieve significant conservation impacts. The GLPCA pilot phase announced the first 25 protected areas to meet the criteria at the IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney in November 2014. These included four MPAs: Iroise Natural Marine Park, Cerbère‐Banyuls Natural Nature Reserve, and Guadeloupe National Park in France, and Gorgona National Park in Colombia. Italy and China also participated in the pilot phase and each has an MPA that is continuing to work towards GLPCA status. The experiences of these sites are described, as well as three other programmes (two regional and one global) that are being developed to promote improved management of MPAs. This information will be useful for other MPAs considering participation in the GLPCA initiative. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Understanding and valuing conflicts in marine protected areas: The best way to develop innovations?

“…The dashboard is used by these parks to report on the effectiveness of their management and to guide their action strategy. Deployment of dashboards in MPAs is currently encouraged by the implementation of a Green List of protected areas supported by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (Wells et al, ), which identifies the protected areas that achieve the targets defined in an international standard, including attaining conservation objectives, implementing effective management, and seeking equitable governance. One of the four pillars of this standard is ‘good governance’, one component of which covers conflict resolution.…”

An appeal for a code of conduct for marine conservation

“…Conservation organizations may need systems of incentives for uptake and rewards for level of implementation -for example, this might take the form of a certification scheme in a similar manner to corporate social responsibility programs or the IUCN Green List [119]. Conversely, sanctions for transgressions or lack of effort may be needed -e.g., published rebukes, prerequisite corrective actions for future funding disbursements, etc.…”

Assessing the Effectiveness of Coastal Marine Protected Area Management: Four Learned Lessons for Science Uptake and Upscaling

“…), pointing to the risk of "paper parks" that fail to meet their goals (Agardy et al, 2003;Rife et al, 2013). The unprecedented number of recent and sometimes large MPAs has raised the issue of their effectiveness at achieving high standards in environmental and social performance; a concern reflected in the creation of guidelines for performance assessments (Parks et al, 2004) and quality labels for effective MPAs 2,3 (Wells et al, 2016).…”