70% of world’s poor rely critically on biodiversity

{UNDP partners with Conservation International, the World Bank, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Global Environment Facility to showcase more than 100 nature-based solutions to tackle global development challenges}

The World Parks Congress, a once-in-a-decade gathering of policy-makers and scientists who shape the global conservation agenda, got underway in Sydney on Wednesday with calls for stronger global recognition of the importance of environmental protection in attaining lasting and equitable development.

The weeklong event is expected to see some of the world’s leading experts on conservation and biodiversity cite ‘increasing evidence’ of the ever-stronger role that protected areas play in achieving a nations’ development goals, including food and water security, disaster risk reduction, protecting livelihoods, and driving poverty reduction.

One third of all the largest cities depend upon forest protected areas for their municipal drinking water. Protected areas also provide water filtrations systems that help avoid the costs of billions of dollars of water treatment facilities around the world. The Catskill Mountains in New York, for example, have saved tax payers over $10 billion since 1997. Protected areas generate jobs and act as engines of local development through the tourism and other sectors, and maintain ecosystem services that sustain livelihoods for hundreds of millions around the world.

These discussions come at a critical time, as the United Nations leads worldwide efforts to create a new global compact expected to succeed the Millennium Development Goals after their deadline in 2015.

Seventy per cent of the world’s poorest people depend critically on biodiversity to provide them with life’s basic necessities of food, water, medicines and livelihoods. Yet a third of the world faces water stress, more than 700 million hectares of tropical forest have been cleared since 1990, and the number of fish stocks over-exploited has tripled in the past 40 years.

Hosted jointly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the New South Wales Government in Australia, the Congress will feature more than 1,700 presentations and events, with heads of state, environment ministers and more than 4,000 delegates from 160 countries in attendance.

UNDP has partnered with Conservation International (CI), the World Bank, IUCN and the GEF to help governments, the private sector and civil society, better understand the potential role protected areas can play in ensuring sustainable development.

“There is ever stronger evidence that if we make protected areas an integral part of our economies, development and well-being, we can achieve some of the world’s most elusive development ambitions,” said Nik Sekhran, Director of Sustainable Development under the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, at UNDP.

“The significant contributions of protected areas to livelihoods, job creation, economic development and maintenance of critical ecosystem services is not currently reflected in national development planning processes, public funding or in the underlying economic decision-making frameworks that drive public and private investments,” said Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Vice-President at Conservation International.

At the Congress, under the programme Stream 5: Reconciling development challenges that UNDP is co-leading with CI and the World Bank, policymakers, practitioners, scientists and businesses will showcase more than 100 innovative solutions from around the world that reconcile sustainable development with the major development challenges of our time.

While significant advances have been made in expanding protected natural eco-systems since the previous Congress held in South Africa in 2004, few countries sufficiently recognise the contributions protected areas make in creating jobs and spurring economic growth, say experts.

Through the GEF Small Grants Programme, UNDP, with the global Indigenous Community Conserved Area (ICCA) Consortium, the German International Development Agency, and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, is also jointly leading programme Stream 6: Enhancing the diversity and quality of governance of protected areas. UNDP will also be hosting the World Indigenous Network (WIN) Pavilion space organized by the Equator Initiative, as well as numerous inputs to the Conservation Finance Pavilion and other events across the Congress.

The coming year is expected to be critical in setting pathways to strengthening the role of protected areas in defining and delivering on the world’s Sustainable Development Goals, the global compact expected to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.

The Congress is expected to culminate in an outcome document titled The Promise of Sydney, which will capture the most strategic thinking of those present, inspiring solutions for the challenges we all face globally and charting the future direction for protected areas.