Equilibrium Research : What's new

Developing landscape approaches to conservation remains a key area of interest for Equilibrium and we are in the process of developing a project looking at integration of landscape approaches into ecoregional conservation..

Nigel recently started a project to examine the role of plantations in the landscape with WWF International, and will be developing a series of “white papers” on ecosystem approaches, social values and high conservation value areas as they relate to tree plantations. An initial scoping paper has been published. Our research project with WWF and Lafarge, on developing monitoring systems for quarry restoration, has been completed and the methodology published at the end of 2007.

Equilibrium runs a database of tools for implementing broad-scale conservation. The Earth Conservation Toolbox http://www.earthtoolbox.net/ contains information and where possible web links to over 300 tools. If you know of conservation tools you think should be included, please contact us.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA), agreed in 2004, has been a major focus of our work over the last few years. We have been working with the CBD, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the United States, WWF International and IUCN – the World Conservation Union on various projects which contribute to the monitoring and implementation of the Programme.

In February 2008, progress on the implementation of the PoWPA was reviewed at the CDB’s Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group on Protected Areas meeting held in Rome. Several publications we have been involved in were launched at the workshop including the newly developed Protected Area Benefits Assessment Tool (part of the WWF Arguments for Protection project), the revised Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool and the report of the second round of Implementation of the Tracking Tool, a book on Category V Protected Areas and Agrobiodiversity and an edition of the WCPA journal Parks, which looks in detail at the implementation of the PoWPA. Other ouputs we have been involved in developing also launched at the meeting include a Scorecard developed and field-tested with WWF on assessing the implementation of the PoWPA and a paper on the Financing of Protected Areas which Nigel co-authored. We also contributed several chapters to a CBD Technical Report Protected Areas in Today's World: Their Values and Benefits for the Welfare of the Planet and accompanying brochure on the benefits of protected areas, which were launched by the CBD Secretariat during the week.

We are currently writing a Manual for Protected Area Managers on Management Planning based on TNC’s Conservation Action Planning (CAP) approach and have with partners developed two in the series of Quick Guides for Protected Area Practitioners for TNC on connectivity in protected area design and filling gaps in protected area systems, due out in the early spring.

Nigel continues to chair the WCPA Task Force on IUCN Categories, which is revising guidance to the IUCN Protected Area Management Categories. The draft revised categories guidelines have now been released for general comment, and much of the first part of 2008 will be spent in field-testing these in a variety of countries. The proceedings of the IUCN Summit on the categories held in May 2007 should be available soon.

Sue is working with UNESCO as part of an expert working group on the simplification of the World Heritage Periodic Reporting questionnaire of both natural and cultural World Heritage sites around the world. The electronic tool that has been developed by the working group is currently being formally field tested by a number of State Parties to the convention.

As noted above we are still actively engaged in the Arguments for Protection series with WWF and The World Bank. The fourth book in the series, which looks at protected areas and poverty: Safety Net: Protected Areas and Poverty Reduction is about to be published, the fifth in the series on the role of protected areas in mitigating environmental disasters will be published in a couple of months and the whole Argument for Protection series will be promoted by WWF at the CBD Conference of Parties in May. As well as completing these two further reports we have written several articles on former publications in the series over the last few months for journals, CBD and FAO publications. We are shortly starting work on the sixth volume, looking at health issues.

December 2007 saw the official end of the field-testing phase of the UNESCO and the UN Foundation project Enhancing our Heritage: monitoring and managing for success in Natural World Heritage Sites. The toolkit developed by the project is currently being written and will be published as part of the UNESCO-World Heritage Technical series. This publication, along with a CD version of the toolkit, will be launched at the next World Heritage Committee meeting in July. UNESCO and partners are now rolling out the monitoring and assessment tools developed during the project across many more natural World Heritage Sites. In particular Sue is on the steering group of an IUCN project in West Africa which is using the EoH toolkit in natural world heritage sites in the region.

During 2007 we also produced a discussion paper for WWF International on the potential for company reserves: protected areas set up on land owned by commercial companies.