PA and the Law side event: Barbara Lausche, Island Resources Foundation Trustee and Sr Advisor on Environmental Law and Policy.

Photo: T. Greiber, IUCN ELP

IUCN ELC Side event on Protected Areas and the Law at CBD COP 10 in Nagoya

28 October 2010 | News – News story

Guidelines for protected areas legislation launched with the participation of the Deputy Chair of IUCN CEL and the Deputy Chair of IUCN WCPA.

State-of-the-art protected areas law – how can it help conserve biodiversity? IUCN introduced its answer to that question on Tuesday, 26 October, at CBD CoP10 in Nagoya, Japan. The Environmental Law Centre, together with IUCN’s Protected Areas Programme, the Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) and the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) presented IUCN’s new Guidelines for Protected Areas Legislation. The Guidelines are the first definitive guidance on protected areas legislation in 30 years.

Author and CEL member Barbara Lausche, JD,  explained that, in addition to setting out and explaining the fundamental elements of protected areas legislation, the Guidelines integrate new developments and emerging issues in International and national law, including private protected areas, community conserved areas, marine protected areas and transboundary protected areas.

The Guidelines will assist legal drafters and all those involved or interested in improving protected areas legislation to take stock of new developments in this field. Countries that update their protected areas legislation on the basis of the Guidelines will help to ensure that their protected areas meet the dual challenge of conserving biological diversity and playing a role in mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The Guidelines will be published in hard copy in early 2011, in IUCN’s three official languages –English, French and Spanish. Each copy will be accompanied by a CD containing the three language versions as well as the 15 case studies illustrating national and transboundary protected areas legal frameworks, and nine matrices that analyze individual protected areas laws. The CD will also be available separately.

The speakers during the 26 October event included (in the order in which they spoke): Barbara Lausche, CEL member and author of the Guidelines; Trevor Sandwith, WCPA Deputy Chair; Ben Boer, CEL and WCPA member; Patricia Moore, Head of IUCN’s Regional Environmental Law Programme, Asia and member of the Steering Committee of the project that supported the preparation of the Guidelines; and Antonio Benjamin, CEL Deputy Chair. Alejandro Iza, Director of IUCN Environmental Law Centre, moderated the panel of speakers.

For more information, write to
IUCN ELC Secretariat
Godesberger Allee 108-112
53175 Bonn, Germany

from the IUCN web site at: http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/environmental_law/?6392/IUCN-ELC-side-event-on-Protected-Areas-and-the-Law-at-CBD-COP-10-in-Nagoya