IUCN Protected Area Categories in the UK
IUCN’s new guidelines on their protected area management categories were published in 2008. In the light of this advice, Nik Lopoukhine, Chair of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas, has asked the IUCN UK National Committee (IUCN UK) to revise and expand the application of IUCN protected area categories in the UK and to improve coverage of UK protected areas on the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).
In response to this request, IUCN UK has set up a Protected Areas Assignment Working Group to lead this process.
Latest News
The IUCN UK Committee’s Protected Areas Assignment Working Group met initially in December 2009 and agreed the need for a meeting of key representatives of stakeholder organisations in government and NGO sectors to determine if there was enthusiasm for reviewing the IUCN categories in the UK.
A workshop was thus held on Friday 19th February 2010 in London to discuss the assignment of the categories in the UK. 28 representatives from NGOs and Statutory Authorities attended. The meeting highlighted the fact that, while the UK has numerous kinds of protected areas (PAs), they are not usually thought of as a system and there is confusion about the extent and variety of PAs in the UK in terms of international reporting. UK PAs are poorly represented in the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) and the UN List of PAs.
The meeting explored using the internationally agreed (and mandated) IUCN PA Management Categories as a tool to provide clarity about PAs in the UK, and as a basis for reporting and communication. The IUCN UK National Committee has agreed to take the lead in developing an assignment process, using the new 2008 guidelines from IUCN. This would identify the full range of the UK’s PAs (i.e. those that met the IUCN definition) and then assign to them a management category.
The meeting welcomed this proposal and concluded by giving unanimous support for the concept of developing further the process of using the IUCN categories in the UK, and decided to initiate this by setting up a task force to implement the project, with some members present volunteering for this role. The discussions (a brief overview of which is given below) will be used to develop a project brief to be distributed to all interested parties.