Protected and conserved areas have a critical role to play in mitigating and adapting to climate change, and in reducing the risk of disasters caused by natural hazards and severe climate events. The IUCN Green List Standard contributes to advancing equitable governance and effective management of protected areas, including embedding climate change mitigation, adaptation and disaster risk reduction elements, through all four components of the standard – Good Governance, Sound Design and Planning, Effective Management, and Successful Conservation Outcomes. Effectively managed protected areas are an essential part of the global and local response to climate change.

Nationally determined contributions and Protected and Conserved Areas

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2015 Paris Agreement can include the contributions of protected and conserved areas in reaching global mitigation and adaptation targets. In a study by WWF US (2019) 151 currently available NDCs were reviewed to determine how UNFCCC Parties intend to utilise protected areas to contribute to their adaptation and mitigation commitments. Some key findings from this study:

• Results show that of the 179 countries included in this analysis, 67—more than one-third—identified protected areas as a means of attaining their adaptation and mitigation goals. Of these, almost half (32) expressed an intention to add new protected areas or expand coverage of those already in place.
• For example, 36 countries indicated plans to increase forest cover, plant trees or expand natural areas, but did not clearly state if or how these areas might be protected or managed. Nature-based solutions to climate change adaptation and mitigation using protected areas were largely absent.
• Only 21 countries (12%) specifically mentioned the carbon-sequestration benefits that protected areas can provide, while just 8 (4%) acknowledged the role that ecosystem services from protected areas can play in helping vulnerable people adapt to climate change. Finally, only 10 NDCs pledged to manage protected areas for current or anticipated climate change risks to ecosystems and biodiversity.

Protected Areas (PA) are an essential part of the global response to climate change. They help address the cause of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG/carbon) emissions. Approximately 15% of terrestrial carbon is stored within the world’s protected areas. They are helping society cope with climate change impacts by maintaining essential services upon which people depend. Without PAs, climate change challenges of mitigation and adaptation would be even greater, and ensuring and strengthening PA management effectiveness yields one of the most powerful natural solutions to the climate crisis.

Protected areas can contribute to the two main responses to climate change through:

Protected area systems have the advantage that they are already established as efficient, successful and cost effective tools for ecosystem management, with associated laws and policies, management and governance institutions, knowledge, staff and capacity. They contain the only remaining large natural habitats in many areas. Opportunities exist to increase their connectivity at landscape level and their effective management so as to enhance the resilience of ecosystems to climate change and safeguard vital ecosystem services.

Experience from disasters such as the Western Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004;  the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011; and Typhoon Haiyan in 2013,  demonstrates that protected areas can be managed effectively  to reduce risks posed from natural hazards. Furthermore, growing evidence published in recent literature also highlights the role PAs play in DRR (such as Dudley et al., 2010). Such natural areas help preserve the integrity of ecosystems and regulate local climate. They assist communities in coping with gradual change (such as in water supplies and agricultural productivity) through the maintenance of essential ecosystem services, including water regulation, pollination and control of soil erosion. Depending on which category an area is classified as, a protected area may also serve as an alternative source of resources following a disaster (such as food, fuel, medicine and shelter) and can therefore be an integral part of contingency planning for disaster preparedness.

The IUCN Green List Standard is a new global standard for Protected and Conserved Areas in the 21st Century. In line with IUCN’s core mission of ‘A just world that values and conserves nature’ the aim of the IUCN Green List Standard is to improve the performance of protected areas to be more equitably and effectively managed and thereby ensure PAs contribute to sustainable development through the conservation of nature and provision of associated social, economic, cultural, and spiritual values.

The IUCN Green List Standard embeds climate change and DRR across its four components in the following main ways:

GNP is one of the most representative protected areas in Colombia with a wealth of biodiversity in its terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems. It achieved Green List status in the pilot phase in 2014. While there are no local communities living on the island, local communities are highly dependent on fisheries and other ecosystem services provided by the Gorgona-Sanquianga region. Aware of its responsibility and the protected area’s importance to the region and communities, the GNP administration updated its Management Plan for the period 2015-2019, taking into account a regional context beyond its own geographical limits, and including for the first time climate change considerations. Climate change adaptation was the focus, in terms of proactively adapting to the risk of negative impacts from climate change to achieving conservation targets in GNP, and on how a well-managed GNP that is adapting to a changing climate can provide greater resilience to communities in the face of climate change impacts.

The climate change considerations are not only part of an analysis to set better conservation measures for species and habitats inside the PA, but to also maintain key resources for the communities that base their livelihoods on the legal activities outside the Park, such as fishing. The process of capacity building has included GNP staff, local stakeholders, WWF technical team support (for implementation of the IUCN Green List standard), and other actor’s inputs and recommendations. GNP administration and WWF Colombia staff acquired new skills and technical capacities related to climate change adaptation through this experience. Today GNP benefits from proactively adapting to a changing climate by reducing the risk of negative impacts on achieving its conservation targets in the future, and local communities benefit from the adaptive management of GNP and the wider regional benefits this will provide to fisheries and other ecosystem services, contributing to a more resilient future to communities and nature in the face of a changing climate.

Key References:

• Natural Solutions- protected areas helping people cope with climate change (Dudley et al.2010)
• Safe Havens: protected areas for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation (Murti & Buyck (ed.), 2014)
• Editorial: Protected areas as natural solutions to climate change, PARKS Journal 22.1 (Londono et al., 2016)