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IUCN WCPA Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement Task Force

IUCN COMMISSION GROUP

IUCN WCPA Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement Task Force

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Overview and description

Description:

Protected and conserved areas (PCAs) are the cornerstone of efforts to conserve biodiversity, and can also support climate mitigation and adaptation, sustainable development goals and avoiding future ...

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Protected and conserved areas (PCAs) are the cornerstone of efforts to conserve biodiversity, and can also support climate mitigation and adaptation, sustainable development goals and avoiding future pandemics. The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) includes a Target to expand PCAs to 30% of lands and waters by 2030. Yet despite the intent that PCAs are to be governed and deliver conservation outcomes for the long-term, they are not always permanent. Legal rollbacks to protections - protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD), the legal tempering, reduction, or elimination of PAs - can compromise PA objectives. Rollbacks may also occur in conserved areas in the future. Unrestrained and poorly-governed PADDD can reduce the effectiveness of PCAs, especially when related to industrial-scale resource extraction and development or large-scale infrastructure. Notably some PADDD events may return rights to access, use, manage, or own lands to IPLCs from which they were previously dispossessed; these types of legal changes are likely to strengthen, and not undermine, conservation outcomes. In recognition of the need to enhance long-term conservation, the 2020 IUCN World Conservation Congress approved a <a href="https://www.iucncongress2020.org/motion/099">Resolution</a&gt; urging a Global Response to Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement (PADDD). The resolution “requests the WCPA to provide technical support to defend the integrity of PAs as a means to reduce PADDD events” and calls on all IUCN members to address PADDD in conservation policy and practice through various mechanisms. PADDD is also listed as an indicator in the post-2020 GBF <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/179e/aecb/592f67904bf07dca7d0971da/cop-15-l-2… framework</a> as a complementary indicator to Target 3. Moreover, the decisions undertaken during COP-15 highlighted the need for improved nature disclosures for business - Target 15 of the deal requires governments to ensure that large and transnational companies disclose their risks, dependencies and impacts on biodiversity. The overall aims of the WCPA PADDD Task Force is to provide capacity and technical support to defend the integrity of PAs as a means to reduce unrestrained and poorly-governed PADDD events and to encouraging governments and non-state actors to report on PADDD.

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Group leadership

Dr Rachel GOLDEN KRONER

Co-Chair
Skilled and passionate interdisciplinary conservation scientist across biomes with experience in NGOs, government, and academia. Track record of effective leadership, high-impact scientific…
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Skilled and passionate interdisciplinary conservation scientist across biomes with experience in NGOs, government, and academia. Track record of effective leadership, high-impact scientific publishing, fundraising, project management, and high-profile media coverage. Award-winning speaker and sought-after leader, collaborator, and mentor. 

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Prof Alta DE VOS

Co-Chair
Alta De Vos is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Alta is an interdisciplinary conservation…
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Alta De Vos is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Alta is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist, focusing on two main research areas: the resilience and transformation of conservation systems, and the development of the social-ecological research theory and methods.

In the case of the former, she uses a wide diversity of mixed- and multi-method approaches, often in transdisciplinary projects and often spatial, to better understand and direct the future of protected areas and other conservation systems, particularly focusing on non-traditional systems with diverse governance approaches and values. With her partners, she works at multiple scales to understand how we can better understand these systems in more generalized, yet still context-specific ways as to inform more fit-for-purpose policy, but also the changes and pathways that are needed to shape equitable resilience of these systems into an uncertain future.

In the case of the latter, she currently directs the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). PECS is a Future Earth core-project (the only one of such programmes based in the global South) that aims to integrate research on the stewardship of social–ecological systems, the services they generate, and the relationships among natural capital, human wellbeing, livelihoods, inequality, and poverty. In this role, she actively engages in building local networks, capacity, and frameworks to address the challenges of our time by doing research for- and with-society, particularly focusing on the implications of such work for research methodology, theory, and policy.

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At a glance

Official name:
IUCN WCPA Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement Task Force
Associated Commissions:
World Commission on Protected Areas
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