Why protected areas?

1. A report from IUCN-WCPA, The Nature Conservancy, UNDP, Wildlife Conservation Society, The World Bank and WWF

2. “ This book clearly articulates for the first time how protected areas contribute significantly to reducing impacts of climate change and what is needed for them to achieve even more. As we enter an unprecedented scale of negotiations about climate and biodiversity it is important that these messages reach policy makers loud and clear and are translated into effective policies and funding mechanisms.” Lord Nicholas Stern in his preface to Natural Solutions

3. Why protected areas? • Protected area systems are already established as efficient, successful and cost effective tools for ecosystem management • They have associated laws and policies, management and governance institutions, knowledge, staff and capacity

4. Why protected areas? • 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

5. Protected areas and climate change • Protected areas are an essential part of the global response to climate change • Protected areas can contribute to the two main responses to climate change through: • Adaptation • Mitigation

6. Adaptation The evidence for the role of using protected areas in ecosystem-based adaptation strategies

7. The challenge • Ecosystem-based adaptation is the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of adaptation strategies to help us cope with the adverse effects of climate change but • The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment estimates that 60% of global ecosystem services are degraded and thus these services are being lost

8. The predictions • Health impacts such as the spread of disease vectors, heat waves, lack of clean water impacting on sanitation • Food shortages through crop failure • Water shortages impacting drinking water, irrigation and reduced hydropower potential • ‘Natural disasters’: flooding, storms, drought, wildfire, insect spreads, ocean acidification

9. The opportunity Protected areas provide two key functions • Protect: maintain ecosystem integrity, buffer local climate, reduce risks and impacts from events such as storms and droughts and sea-level rise • Provide: maintain essential ecosystem services that help people cope with changes in water supplies, fisheries, disease and agricultural productivity caused by climate change

10. Protecting ecosystem integrity Protected areas can help to reduce the impact of all but the largest natural disasters • Floods: by providing space for floodwaters to disperse and natural vegetation can also absorb the impacts of flooding • Landslides: stabilising soil and snow to stop slippage or slow movement once a slip is underway

11. Storm surges: intact natural systems such as coral reefs, barrier islands, mangroves, dunes and marshes can all help blocking storm surges • Drought and desertification: effective management systems can control grazing pressure and intact watersheds help to keep vital water resources in soils • Fire: natural vegetation can limit encroachment in fire-prone areas and the maintenance traditional management systems can reduce fire risk

12. Provide natural resources Protected areas are proven tools for maintaining essential natural resources and services, which in turn can help increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of livelihoods in the face of climate change • Water: forest and wetland protected areasprovide both purer water and (especially in tropical montane cloud forests) increased water flow

13. Fish resources: marine and freshwater protected areas conserve and rebuild fish stocks • Food: by protecting crop wild relatives to facilitate crop breeding; through pollination services; and providing sustainable food supplies for communities • Health: habitat protection to slow the expansion of vector-borne diseases that thrive in degraded ecosystems; access to traditional medicines and compounds for pharmaceuticals

14. How protected areas can deliver even more • Understanding: encourage protected area managers to assess and manage values and benefits • Planning: consider vital ecosystem services as well as biodiversity in gap analysis • Restoration and connectivity: major potential to restore ecosystem integrity • Resilience: improve ecosystem resilience particularly when ecosystem services are under threat

15. Adaptive management: protected area managers need to consider climate impacts and climate solutions in their planning and management • Economics: realise the theoretical – goods and services from an effectively managed representative protected area network could have a value of US$4,400-5,200 billion a year • Integrate: ensure protected areas are included in national and local adaptation strategies and management plans

16. The challenge for protected areas • Integrity: ensure that protected areas are capable of delivering potential services • Effective management of current areas • More protection, particularly in under-represented areas such as freshwater and marine areas • Use of all governance and management types

17. Trade-offs: guidance on how we manage climate impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem-based adaptation strategies • Resilience: research and management advice to understand how we build resilience of protected areas • Partnerships: with relevant sectors and communities – disaster relief agencies, seed companies, water companies, fishers, farmers etc • Policy: enabling environment linking biodiversity and climate change policy

18. Mitigation The potential to use protected areas in carbon storage and capture

19. The challenge • Vegetation loss is already responsible for around 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions …and furthermore… • Many ecosystems that are currently sinks for CO2 could soon “flip” and become net sources due to climate change and other human impacts

20. The opportunity Natural ecosystems offer two key functions • Storing existing carbon in vegetation and soils and thus preventing further loss • Capturing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thus reducing net greenhouse gas levels Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

21. Carbon storage • Major carbon stores exist in soil, forest, peat and inland waters, grassland, mangroves, coastal marshes and sea grass • Estimates for the amount of carbon stored in tropical forests range from 170-250 t/ha. The highest known carbon storage is in a Eucalyptus forest. Temperate and boreal forests are also major sinks. Kinabatangan Nature Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia, bottom inset from Lamington NP, Australia

22. Carbon storage • Peat is probably a larger store – an estimated 550 Gt stored globally. But 2008 emissions from degraded peat were estimated at 1,298 Mt, plus over 400 Mt from peat fires, threatening this store • Mangroves, sea grass beds and salt marshes all store substantial amounts of carbon although these sources have been largely ignored until now Kinabatangan Nature Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia, bottom inset from Lamington NP, Australia

23. Carbon storage • Grasslands may hold more than 10% of the total carbon in the biosphere, but mismanagement and conversion is causing major losses in places – grassland remains one of the most un-protected biomes • Estimates of soil carbon vary widely but it is thought to be the largest terrestrial store. Agriculture is often a source rather than sink but changes in farming (less tillage, more organic methods etc) can help to build carbon stocks Kinabatangan Nature Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia, bottom inset from Lamington NP, Australia

24. Carbon capture Most ecosystems can also continue to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

25. Carbon capture • Both young and old forests capture significant amounts of carbon dioxide, as do peatlands, grasslands and many marine ecosystems • Recent research in the Amazon, Congo Basin and in boreal forests show that old-growth forests continue to sequester carbon • The success of sequestration from commercial forests depends on whether use is short-term (e.g. newspapers) or long-term Kinabatangan Nature Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia, bottom inset from Lamington NP, Australia

26. Carbon storage and capture • Knowledge of management needs for carbon sequestration is also increasing fast • There is a huge potential to protect natural ecosystems to help store and capture carbon – and to supply many other important goods and services • But on the other hand, many ecosystems risk switching from being sinks to sources of carbon due to degradation and climate change… Kinabatangan Nature Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia, bottom inset from Lamington NP, Australia

27. How protected areas can deliver • Protected areas are the most effective tool yet found for maintaining carbon in natural vegetation • The UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre estimates that 15% of terrestrial carbon is stored in protected areas Kinabatangan Nature Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia, bottom inset from Lamington NP, Australia

28. The challenge for protected areas • New skills, tools and funding opportunities will be needed to make best use of available management options • Gap analysis for protected area design may need to start including carbon • New staff skills will be required • Protected areas need to be included in REDD and similar funding schemes

29. Policy responses Opportunities to use protected areas in climate response strategies need to be prioritised by national and local governments

30. Policy requirements • UNFCCC: recognise protected areas as tools for mitigation and adaptation to climate change; and open up key climate change related funding mechanisms, including REDD and adaptation funds, to the creation, enhancement and effective management of protected area systems

31. Policy requirements • CBD: renew the Programme of Work on Protected Areas at COP10 to address more specifically the role of protected areas in responses to climate change, in liaison with other CBD programmes

32. Policy requirements • National and local governments: incorporate the role of protected area systems into national climate change strategies and action plans, including for mitigation by reducing the loss and degradation of natural habitats, and for adaptation by reducing the vulnerability and increasing

33. Natural Solutions • Natural Solutions is the first report to review the scientific literature in detail and make the case for the role of protected areas in climate change strategies • For more information on the role of protected areas in coping with the full report can be downloaded at: ???