Freshwater Protected Area Resourcbook

Appendix 20. Protected area logic and management

Jon Nevill.
A20.1 What are “protected areas”?

Setting aside the IUCN definitions for a moment, what meanings are contained in this phrase – these two words?

The term AREA implies boundaries and permanence. The area can be defined on a map, and it will be there tomorrow, and into the future. The term PROTECTED implies intent and action. Intent can be understood if the area has an agreed management plan guiding the programs of the managing authority. Action, directed towards the goal of protection, needs to be effective or it is worthless. Effectiveness can only be understood if monitoring takes place to find out if the management regime is actually protecting the area against threats to its values (natural values in our case).
A “protected area” then (under the most basic understanding of the words themselves) needs three critical elements past its core objective: security of tenure, an agreed management plan, and a monitoring program to ascertain effectiveness.
If we examine the IUCN’s definitions and categories for protected areas, are these three elements there? My reading is ‘yes’ they are there, either explicitly or implicitly. For example, their use of the term ‘effective’ implies the existence of a monitoring program – how else can effectiveness be gauged? At a basic level the IUCN’s definitions hold inherent and important logic.
A20.2 History: where did protected areas come from?

In my view, any general discussion of the role of protected areas needs to look back, at least to the Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972.

The Stockholm Declaration states: (Principle 2) “The natural resources of the earth, including the air, water, land, flora and fauna and especially representative samples of natural ecosystems, must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations through careful planning or management as appropriate.” (my emphasis)
This simple but fundamental concept has been repeated in the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992, Agenda 21 from the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro 1992), and the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg 2002). It has become one of the core principles of conservation biology, and more widely of natural resource management in general. This principle is one of the core drivers of the terrestrial protected area programs of all nations – even though it has not found expression in those nations’ freshwater protected area programs. Having made this comment, it should be pointed out that both the Australian and New Zealand national governments have clear policy commitments to the development of representative freshwater protected areas, although, to date, these commitments have not been funded or actioned in any comprehensive way.
A20.3 Do Australian reporting frameworks reflect protected area logic?

The essential logic behind the IUCN protected area scheme is reflected in the Ramsar Secretariat’s reporting requirements, if not the Ramsar programs of the various party nations. The Secretariat emphasises the need for sites to have management plans and funded programs, and that these should contain provisions for monitoring changes in the site’s values over time, and in the face of identified threats.

It is illuminating to see that, within Australia’s Ramsar program, major management gaps are apparent. The latest Ramsar CoP report on the Ramsar website is the 1999 CoP7 report – the current report (CoP8) has not yet been mounted. In preparing the 1999 report, the Secretariat asked participating parties to report specifically on management and monitoring arrangements – fundamental aspects (as noted above) to any protected area program.
Australia’s CoP7 report (dated 1999) showed that, of the then 49 sites, only 15 had agreed management plans, with a further 26 plans in preparation or proposed. Of these 41 existing or proposed management plans, only 15 incorporated a monitoring component! This could be typical of other parties to the convention, noting that (I have been told) Australia was the first party to sign up to the [Ramsar] Convention on Wetlands 1971, and Cobourg Peninsula in Australia’s Northern Territory was the first site accepted and listed on the Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance database.
Progress since the CoP7 report has, perhaps, not been encouraging (hard to tell until the CoP8 report becomes available). For example, the CoP7 report states:
“The Lake Albacutya Ramsar site is included in the Wimmera Heritage River. In 1997, draft management plans were published for each of the (18) Heritage Rivers. The plans will be finalised in 1998.”
At the close of 2005, none of the 18 Draft Heritage River Management Plans have been finalised, in spite of implementation under the Heritage Rivers Act 1992 (Victoria) depending on ministerial endorsement of the plan!
A20.4 Do Australian management frameworks reflect protected area logic?

A cursory examination of the Australian Ramsar webpage suggests that management frameworks may (in some cases) fail to follow basic protected area logic – even where such frameworks exist, and even where they are funded.

Take the Cobourg Peninsula (Gurig National Park) Ramsar site, for example. According to Australia’s Ramsar webpage (http://www.deh.gov.au/cgi-bin/wetlands/report.pl accessed 20 Nov 2005) threats to the park (item 24) are identified, as well as “conservation measures taken” (item 25). Logically, you would expect to find a connection here: conservation measures would be expected to address identified threats. However, there is in fact little connection between the two entries. The “Wilderness Resort” is listed under ‘threats’ and “visitor numbers are restricted to about 15 vehicles per day” is listed under ‘measures taken’ but here the connection ends. A decline in dugong numbers due to prawn trawling bycatch, an extremely serious issue given the threatened status of the dugong, receives no mention under item 25. Moreover the listing contains no information on programs for monitoring park values, or the reporting of such monitoring if it exists.
While a more detailed examination of management frameworks would need to be made before firm conclusions could be drawn, based upon my discussions with site managers I believe that such an examination would find many examples where the fundamental logic of area protection was missing from Ramsar management frameworks, and perhaps from Australia’s protected area management in general.