National parks and nature reserves

National parks and nature reserves form about 15 percent of Earth’s land area and contain valuable natural resources and representative samples of species and ecosystems upon which humanity depends. Of the fifteen regions recognized by the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), North America has the most protected area; Europe has the most individual protected sites; and with more than 20 percent of its region protected, South America has the highest percentage of protected land compared to total land area.

Background

Since the mid-twentieth century, Earth’s human population has tripled, raising demand for resources that include not only land and but also plants and animals for food, medicine, and scientific research. There is continuing controversy over management of public lands with respect to these and other resources, such as carbon, natural gas, timber, and minerals. There are more than 120,000 protected areas worldwide. Environmental protection agencies can be found in more than one hundred countries, and more than five hundred international environmental treaties and agreements have been established.

National governments usually designate land for preservation. Several nonprofit organizations work internationally to call attention to ecosystems that are of global value and need protection. National parks and nature reserves were among the first protected areas of the modern movement, which began in the United States in the nineteenth century and spread worldwide.

IUCN Designations

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) broadly defines a protected area to include any geographical location in which protection of biodiversity is a priority. Protected areas are internationally designated for conserving species and ecosystems. For effective protection, adequate funding for protected area management is fundamental. Ensuring that the needs of a growing human population are balanced with the need to conserve the world’s biological diversity is also essential.

Nationally designated protected areas are those that are recognized, designated, and supported by national legislation or national authority. International organizations, such as the United Nations, have encouraged national governments to jointly create a system of collective protection. International sites are thus defined as areas that are recognized and protected by international agreements, such as treaties or conventions. International cooperation is assumed to assure greater protection than national initiatives alone. Since the 1970’s, international organizations and conventions have promoted the establishment of international sites and have encouraged national governments to set a number of protection targets.

Several international conventions have produced agreements affecting protected areas. In June, 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly known as the Earth Summit, was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It brought nations together to reach global agreement on sustainable development. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which recognized that biodiversity is fundamental to human life and therefore created policies and incentives for sustaining biodiversity, was one of the major agreements to come out of the Earth Summit. In 2004, the Seventh Conference of the Parties to the CBD established the Program of Work on Protected Areas (POWPA) to support the establishment and maintenance of protected areas, to set goals and dates for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss, to work to reduce poverty, and to pursue sustainable development.

In 2000, at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York City, world leaders set eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015. Among these goals was the establishment of protected areas to ensure environmental and reduce biodiversity loss by integrating principles of sustainable development into national policies and programs. Both the CBD and the MDGs have established terrestrial and marine goals for protected area coverage. These goals call for at least 10 percent of each of the world’s ecological regions to be effectively conserved.

IUCN Management

Protected areas such as parks and reserves can differ widely in their purpose and management. Through a classification system developed by the IUCN and encouraged by the CBD, categorization of these areas is established in accordance with the area’s management objectives: A strict “nature reserve” is managed mainly for scientific research; a “wilderness area” is managed to preserve its natural condition; a “national park” is managed mainly for protection and recreation; a “natural monument” is managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features; a “habitat/species area” is managed to ensure the maintenance of habitats and/or to meet the requirements of specific species; a “protected landscape/seascape” is managed mainly for conservation and recreation; and a “managed resource area” is managed to ensure long-term protection and maintenance of biological diversity while also providing for sustainability of resources.

These IUCN categories are used for diverse purposes, including site planning, setting regulations, land and water use negotiations, and progress reports on establishing and maintaining protected areas. At the Durban, South Africa, Worlds Parks Congress (2003) and the Bangkok, Thailand, World Conservation Congress (2004) proposals were made to add a governance dimension to the categories. The IUCN Governance Matrix, a result of those proposals, provided information categorizing sites as privately owned and managed, government owned and managed, community owned and managed, or comanaged.

Because the terms “national park” and “reserve” were in use before the IUCN system was first implemented in 1978, many protected areas with such titles may have management goals that differ from those with the same IUCN designations. For example, Yozgat Camlığı National Park in Turkey is managed as a national monument. Snowdonia National Park in Wales and the United Kingdom is managed as a protected landscape/seascape. The Wolong Nature Reserve in China is a strict nature reserve established mainly for giant pandas. The Talamanca Cabécar Anthropological Reserve in Costa Rica is managed primarily for protection of forest resources.

Biodiversity may be protected under not only different but also multiple IUCN management designations. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world. In 1975, more than 98 percent of the reef was designated a marine protected area, but fourteen bioregions were unprotected. Following conservation campaigns in 2003, the area under strict protection by national parks and reserves was increased. By the mid-2010s into the 2020s, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was being protected by the Australian government and the government of the state of Queensland. Together,  the two entities plan to spend more than $5 billion to preserve the reef, which is under threat by the effects of climate change.

Expanded Global Protection

The United Nations may broaden biodiversity protection in accord with the conventions on World Heritage Sites, theMan and the Reserve Programme (MAB), and Ramsar Sites. In addition, the World Database on Protected Areas maintains information on protected areas that includes these various classifications.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Program promotes the identification, protection, and of outstanding cultural and natural heritage. The World Heritage Convention, which calls for the designation of biological and cultural World Heritage Sites, was adopted by UNESCO in 1972. In 2023, the World Heritage list included 1,199 sites in more than 150 countries.

The primary goal of UNESCO’s MAB is to improve the global relationship of people with their environment. MAB began in 1970; its Biosphere Reserve concept was launched in 1974 and revised in 1995. Each Biosphere Reserve is established primarily to promote species and ecosphere conservation, economic development, and environmental research and education. In 2023, there were approximately 748 Biosphere Reserves in more than 130 countries.

The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. The Ramsar Convention aims to conserve and use wisely all wetlands through local, national, and regional cooperation in concert with sustainable development. A broad definition of wetlands is used for protected habitats that include lakes, rivers, marshes, peatlands, coral reefs, mangroves, and rice paddies. The Ramsar list contains nearly eighteen hundred wetlands covering more than 160 million hectares.

Data on protected areas have been tracked since the World Parks Congress in 2003. The world’s first officially designated park, Yellowstone National Park in the United States, was established in 1872. Afterward, the number of nationally and internationally designated sites has increased. The comprehensive World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) helps in tracking conservation trends and assessing progress toward conservation goals. The WDPA holds spatial and attribute information from governmental and nongovernmental organizations on more than 120,000 national and international protected areas. The WDPA also holds information on private, community, and comanaged reserves. The UNEP-WCMC uses the database to update the U.N. List of Protected Areas and to track the world’s progress toward targets for biodiversity coverage, biodiversity representation, and management effectiveness.

Case Study: The Galápagos Islands

Protected areas such as the Galápagos Islands and Marine Reserve in Ecuador exemplify the extent to which selected areas can receive protection. This popular UNESCO spot has been a World Heritage Site since 1978 and a Biosphere Reserve since 1984. Because of its fragile ecosystem and the negative effects of tourism growth, the area was designated a World Heritage Site in Danger in 2007. The Reserve encompasses 97 percent of the land area of the Galápagos Islands and more than ten times that area offshore.

The Galápagos Islands’ ecosystem features coastal-marine, biological, and geological developments that attract scientists and researchers. Ongoing seismic and volcanic activities reflect the processes that formed the islands. These processes, together with the extreme isolation of the islands, led to the development of related marine and terrestrial species that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution following his visit to the region in 1835.

Many visitors are drawn to the Galápagos, and the lucrative tourism industry has attracted employable immigrants from the mainland. Tourism and immigration have led to both increased land development and the introduction of plant species that now outnumber native species. Fisheries have led to the depletion of groupers, lobsters, and sea cucumbers. Illegal fishing is an additional problem.

The Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS) and the Galápagos National Park Service formed a participatory management group for the Galápagos Marine Reserve. In 1988, the Special Law for the Galápagos was passed to keep this management approach. Scientific data on the fisheries and coastal ecosystem inform decisions of the management group. Results from CDRS marine surveys revealed bleaching of corals and crustose corallines, mortality of barnacles, and spread of fish species from the north to the south of the archipelago. Other findings included the absence or low of commercially exploited species. Ongoing research monitors the Galápagos marine and coastal ecosystem and marine resources. A Galápagos geographical information system (GIS) summarizes the existing information on species distributions and densities, physical environmental data, and human impacts in a comprehensive form to promote informed management decisions.

The Ecuadoran government has instituted and enforced local protection for decades, and the UNESCO designations have added funding and further protection. UNESCO makes recommendations to the park, such as quarantine measures to reduce alien invasions, and has instituted a program to eliminate animals that destroy the native vegetation. The CDRS has adopted a broad approach to the problems associated with Galápagos biodiversity conservation, both marine and terrestrial. Such conservation efforts include research, education, and training. The 2007 IUCN/UNESCO mission conducted stakeholder meetings in an attempt to identify additional solutions to these problems. A presidential decree was issued, declaring the Galápagos ecosystem in a state of risk and its conservation and environmental management of national priority and outlined an agenda to address systematically the various factors affecting the state of conservation of the property.

Other Management Systems

Among other international nonprofit organizations promoting biodiversity by protecting national parks and reserves are Conservation International, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Nature Conservancy.

The mission of Conservation International is to safeguard global biodiversity and to demonstrate that humanity can live in harmony with nature. Conservation International strives to protect the richest regions of plant and animal life, biodiversity “hot spots.” To qualify as a hot spot, a region must contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants as endemics, and the region must have lost at least 70 percent of its original habitat. Conservation International has identified thirty-four biodiversity hot spots. Although these lands cover only 2.3 percent of the Earth’s surface, they are a haven for more than one-half of all plant species and 42 percent of all terrestrial vertebrate species.

The WWF is the largest multinational conservation organization in the world. The fund has identified Global 200 ecoregions for conservation within terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats. The regions are chosen for their exceptional levels of biodiversity, species richness, endemism, or unusual ecological and evolutionary phenomena. The Global 200 list includes not only Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands but also Ecuador’s largest national park, Yasuní. Conservation International tries to correlate its biodiversity hot spots with the Global 200 list. There is a 92 percent overlap within the most crucial and endangered regions.

Yasuní National Park lies in the western Amazon basin. The park protects rain forests that are widely recognized by scientists and conservationists as among the most biodiverse on Earth. The WWF has named the area a Global Ecoregion Priority, and UNESCO designated the park a Biosphere Reserve in 1989. Within 1 of Yasuní, 644 different species of trees have been identified. The park shelters an astounding diversity of wildlife. There are 567 birds species, 106 amphibian species, 72 reptile species, and 173 mammal species, including 13 species of primates. Yasuní holds the country’s largest oil reserve, around 1 billion barrels. Ecuador has offered to protect Yasuní from oil drilling in exchange for cash compensation from the international community. Ecuador’s proposal has brought strong international attention to the concept of payment for ecosystem services and whether payments should be made for avoided degradation of ecosystem services.

The mission of the Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The Conservancy owns and manages the largest private system of nature sanctuaries in the world and has joined other organizations to impact biodiversity conservation in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

The Maya Biosphere Reserve is located in the Petén department in northern Guatemala. This reserve is the largest protected area within the Maya Forest and contains more than 10 percent of Guatemala’s total land area. In 1990, the Guatemalan government and UNESCO established the Maya Biosphere Reserve to safeguard the region’s outstanding biological and cultural diversity. Within the reserve are eight core protected areas, including Tikal National Park, which was declared a Natural and Cultural World Heritage Site in 1979. Tikal National Park is located in the south-central part of the reserve. In the western part of the reserve, Sierra del Lacandon National Park is a protected area that harbors the archaeological ruins of Piedras Negras, a Mayan archaeological site. A ecoregional assessment published in 2006 and revised in 2007 concluded that Lacandon was among the most intact sections of the Maya Forest. The park is the second largest in Guatemala’s national park system and is a corridor that bridges Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve to the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico.

The Nature Conservancy works in the Maya Biosphere Reserve because the area has enormous ecological, cultural, and commercial value. However, it faces numerous threats, including unplanned colonization, ranching and agricultural activities, unstable and excessive extraction, and uncertain land tenure. In 2006, the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International negotiated a landmark debt-for-nature transaction between the United States and Guatemala. Under this agreement, the United States agreed to forgive $24 million in debt owed to it by Guatemala in exchange for the funds being invested in tropical forest conservation in Guatemala.

Bibliography

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