Protected areas system planning and monitoring

The Vth World Parks Congress to be held in Durban, South Africa, September 8-17, 2003 will evaluate progress in protected areas conservation and stipulate strategic policies for the coming decade. Most countries of the world have at least a collection of protected areas, and have signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, while considerable international funding has been established to help developing countries finance their conservation commitment. Yet only few countries have had the opportunity to systematically select biodiversity in such a way that together, their protected areas form a realistic system in which the majority of national biological heritage may find a reasonably secure refuge.

"Protected Areas System Synthesis and Monitoring" provides scientifically argumented methods and tools for the design of rational protected areas systems, their monitoring and an approximation of their costs. While in the 1970s, conservationists throughout the world were distressed about an apparent destruction of much of the biological wealth and beauty of nature on earth, scientists struggled with defining what needed to be conserved, how much and what needed to be done. The study presents appropriate technology computer programmes and techniques on how to identify and map biodiversity using ecological surrogates to spatially distinguish species assemblages.

For a long time, ecosystem mapping has been possible from aerial photographs, and this was applied in some parts of Africa, in Belize and in Western Europe on a moderate scale. Interpretation was slow and the photographs were expensive and national sets were often incomplete. As a result, the maps of natural vegetation covered only few parts of the world. It was not until the 1990s that satellite images had become effectively available to a broader gremium of scientists and biologists. Some of the first detailed mapping applications with remotely sensed imagery for the tropics was the pioneering work by Iremonger in 1993, 1994 and 1997. These were important advances as they facilitated much faster and more cost-effective mapping, particularly after the LANDSAT 7 imagery became available for less than US $500 per image in the year 2000. GIS software had also become more broadly available which can now be operated from regular desktop computers.

The World Bank/Netherlands Government/CCAD financed the production of an ecosystem-mapping, spanning more than 1500 km from Belize to Panama: the "Map of the Ecosystems of Central America". Ecosystems were mapped by more than 20 scientists using the "Tentative Physiognomic-Ecological Classification of Plant Formations of the Earth", developed under the auspices of the UNESCO, complemented with additional aquatic ecosystems and some floristic modifiers. The term ecosystem was used, because it was argued that areas with distinct physiognomic and ecological characteristics would not only have partially distinct sets of floristic elements, but also partially distinct sets of fauna and fungi elements. It was demonstrated that ecosystems derived from such criteria could be identified in considerable detail and a short period, using satellite images and teams of experienced national biologists. This opening the way to worldwide detailed identification and localisation of ecosystems and related species assemblages. It now has become possible to distinguish and map partially distinct assemblages of species rapidly and in considerable detail.

The Honduran part of that map was used to evaluate the presence and gaps of ecosystem representation in the protected areas system, SINAPH, of Honduras. An MS-Excel based spreadsheet evaluation programme called MICOSYS was used to compare the relative importance of each area and to design alternative models for protected areas system for different scenarios of conservation security and socio-economic benefits. To achieve this, very specific criteria are needed that allow differentiation of size requirements for protected areas depending on a variety of factors such as Minimum Viable Population (MVPs) and Minimum Area requirements (MARs), functionality for both terrestrial and aquatic species of animals, plants and fungi, as well as ecosystem characteristics. Several principles and a few new ideas have been integrated into a holistic approach that allows the synthesis of rational protected areas systems. Particularly, new ideas have been presented on the minimum required sizes of protected areas, in which not merely top predators were considered as limiting factors, but rather ecosystems as a whole. As far as the SLOSS (Single Large Or Several Small reserves) debate is concerned, it is clear that we will need SLASS: Several Large And Several Small reserves, the latter complementing with ecosystems absent in the large areas protected areas. The proposed method not only generates differentiation in importance of the protected areas on the basis of socio-economic and ecological factors, but it also calculates estimates of investment needs and recurrent costs. It was originally developed in 1992 for Costa Rica, but it is country-size independent and may be applied anywhere in the world. The cost calculations are of strategic importance. Governments all over the world have made great progress in institutionalising protected areas. But it was only a first necessary step. Adequate funding has not yet come along to meet the requirements. A realistic idea about costs is necessary to work toward finding solutions to the financing problem.

One of the by-products of the Map of the Ecosystems of Central America is an MS-Access-based database calledProtected Areas and Ecosystems Monitoring Database, for storage of ecological field information, to support physical, physiognomic and floristic information. The database has been expanded to also store information on fauna as well as essential information on the use of natural resources and visitation within an area, thus creating a tool for protected area or ecosystem monitoring. In Honduras, a monitoring approach was developed and the database had become fully integrated and made user-friendlier, so that it could also be used by park rangers.

The techniques used in the methodology are all known methods that have been evaluated and tested to be integrated into an "appropriate technology" approach. User-friendly applications were designed in familiar programmes to be accessible to national scientists and rangers anywhere in the world. Each application may be used independently and may be customised to suit national needs. It has not been designed to replace existing monitoring systems, but to be available for countries where a database is not yet available or for individual users and or protected areas.