Overcoming Paper Parks: A Guide for Meaningful Protected Areas
The expression “paper parks” refers to protected areas that may exist on paper but lack appropriate management to have a conservation or preservation impact. Mainly, the expression alludes to marine protected areas (MPA), but land protected areas suffer the same lack of management and resources. Unfortunately, real sanctuaries for biodiversity are still rare. But a few governments are taking the matter into their own hands.
Most recently, in April 2024, the Quebec government granted $4.48 million to the Fonds d'action Saint-Laurent, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the St. Lawrence River's ecosystems and biodiversity, in order to enhance the health of these essential ecosystems. Still in Quebec, the SNAP Canada (Society for Nature and Parks in Canada) would like to start protecting a 30 000 km² area in south Quebec, an area particularly hard to protect and that would represent 1,8% of Quebec. The project would require $10 to $15 million from the $650 million the Quebec government promised to invest after the 2022 COP15 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.K. government was the 1st one to definitely bannish bottom trawling in its section of Dogger Bank, an MPA in the North Sea. Meanwhile, Greece has taken a significant step by becoming the first European country to announce a ban on bottom trawling in all its national marine parks and protected areas. This decision comes with a substantial investment of €780 million to safeguard Greece's marine ecosystems. A state-of-the-art surveillance system, including drones, will be established to enforce the ban.
So, What Makes a Paper Park a Paper Park?
Economic and social pressures, pollution, poor management techniques and sometimes a lack of political support leave protected areas suffering from degradation. Without proper management, these areas remain vulnerable to threats like overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution, and illegal activities, ultimately rendering their designation meaningless. Our National Parks monitoring software will help you strategize.
Insufficient allocation of resources and funding for management after the initial designation of the protected area. Creating new protected areas is often prioritized over providing for their long-term operational needs.
Lack of enforcement capabilities, such as inadequate numbers of rangers/wardens, monitoring systems, and penalties for violations of regulations within the protected area boundaries.
Absence of comprehensive management plans that outline strategies, responsibilities, and measurable objectives for the protected area to achieve its conservation mandate.
Lack of support and involvement from local communities and stakeholders, leading to conflicts, non-compliance with regulations, and unsustainable resource exploitation within protected areas.
Strategies to Turn Paper Parks into Effective Protected Areas
It always comes down to money. Governments need to finance appropriate resources, like staff for research, monitoring and enforcement.
Increased focus on monitoring and evaluating management effectiveness:
The "Paper Park Index" study published in 2023 collected data from stakeholder perceptions to assess the level of illegal fishing occurring within MPAs globally. This highlights efforts to better understand and quantify the problem.
Initiatives like the Global Database on Protected Area Management Effectiveness (GD-PAME) aim to consolidate data on management inputs, processes, and conservation outcomes to identify paper parks. Our web app GeoPaysages allows for monitoring changes linked to natural phenomenons and anthropic activities.
2. Emphasis on providing adequate resources and capacity:
There is growing recognition that designating protected areas alone is insufficient without allocating sufficient funds, personnel, equipment, and training for effective management and enforcement.
Programs like the Blue Parks Initiative provide financial and technical support to help MPAs become operationally effective and avoid becoming paper parks.
3. Promoting co-management and community involvement:
Involving local communities, indigenous groups, and stakeholders in the planning and management of protected areas has been shown to increase compliance and reduce the risk of paper parks.
Approaches like Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs) that devolve some management responsibilities to communities are gaining traction.
4. Strengthening legal frameworks and enforcement:
Some countries are updating and strengthening their legislation related to protected areas to include clearer regulations, enforcement mechanisms, and penalties for violations.
Emerging technologies like vessel monitoring systems and remote sensing are being applied to improve monitoring and enforcement capabilities within MPAs.
Here at Natural Solutions, we’ve built solutions with and for french National Parks. Our Geonature App allow for fauna, flora and other taxa data collection (web and mobile), habitat data collection, surveys management, and much more.
Some Data on Land and Marine Protected Areas:
Terrestrial Protected Areas:
As of 2022, around 15.7% of the world's terrestrial and inland water areas (excluding Antarctica) are covered by nationally designated protected areas. This amounts to approximately 20.8 million km2.
When including territories covered by other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) recognized by indigenous peoples and local communities, the total terrestrial area under protection increases to around 22.5 million km2 or 17% of land area.
(Source: Protected Planet Report 2022 by UNEP-WCMC, IUCN and NGS)
Marine Protected Areas:
As of early 2023, around 8.4% of the global ocean area is covered by marine protected areas, amounting to approximately 29.4 million km2.
However, only 2.8% of this area (around 1 million km2) is classified as fully or highly protected with no extractive activities allowed.
(Source: World Database on Protected Areas, March 2023 update)
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