Important Plant Areas (IPAs)

Many protected areas worldwide overlap with ‘territories and areas conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities’ or ‘ICCAs’ (Indigenous peoples’ and community conserved areas’). These overlapped ICCAs include conserved commons, sacred places and Indigenous and community protected areas. Appropriately recognising and respecting overlapped ICCAs in protected area governance, management and practice can strengthen conservation, affirm rights and promote equitable protected area governance. This volume identifies six approaches or pathways and provides guidance on implementing 20 good practices for appropriately recognizing, respecting and supporting overlapped ICCAs in existing, new and expanded protected areas of all governance types and management categories.

The manual provides guidance for States Parties and all those involved in the care of World Heritage cultural properties on how to comply with the requirements of the Convention. It also aims to help States Parties to ensure that heritage has a dynamic role in society and harnesses, but also delivers to others, the mutual benefits that such a role can create. This Manual deals only with the management of cultural heritage sites. Natural World Heritage properties have many similar issues but they also have different problems.

West Africa is characterized by rapid population growth, endemic poverty and poor governance and management of natural resources. This situation is exacerbated by the negative effects of climate change and is unequivocally leading to the depletion of West African natural capital, including the ecosystems on which the population largely depends. Conservation and management of natural resources, which is a necessity to sustain our planet, requires well-informed decision-making towards sustainable growth and long-term development. Natural Capital Accounting (NCA), also known as ecosystem accounting, can be an answer to the request for evidence-based information for policy-making.

This second edition of The state of protected and conserved areas in Eastern and Southern Africa builds on the first edition published in 2020 and provides updates on how the region is managing and governing protected and conserved areas, effectively providing a regional update on the progress towards the achievement of Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity framework. While the first edition was published in relation to the previous global targets (in particular Aichi Target 11), this edition covers progress on the common indicators around management effectiveness and governance and expands to include additional information that corresponds to the revised target on PCAs (Target 3).

Proposes an overview of the concept of sustainable use, drawing from the growing body of literature concerned with common property resources, ecosystem management and community based natural resource management. It also provides a synoptic account of the state of living natural resources in Mesoamerica, taking into account the efforts undertaken in situ and ex situ Conservation. It also addresses many of the drivers that are affecting the management and final use of natural resources, with particular emphasis on traditional knowledge systems and community based natural resource management. A final section analyses the range of on-going experiences in the local se and management of natural resources, including forest resources, non timber forest products, wildlife and coastal and marine resources. It is hoped that this state of the art review will serve as a reference for future conservation and sustainable use efforts in the Mesoamerican region.