IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Co-Chairs: Melinda Janki and Ben Boer

In 2006 the Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) and the Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) established a Task Force on Protected Areas Law and Policy.

CEL and WCPA members Melinda Janki (for CEL) and Ben Boer (for WCPA) were appointed as co-chairs of the Task Force. Members of the Task Force are drawn from both CEL and WCPA and come from a wide range of countries.

The Task Force is focused on analysing existing governance in protected areas and providing advice on improving governance models.

The general objective of the Task Force is to identify the legal principles and mechanisms that should be applied with using the IUCN management categories, including providing guidance on legal mechanisms for recognising privately owned, co-managed and community conserved areas.

The specific objectives of the Task Force include analysing the legal issues raised by rivate/community owned/managed protected areas and proposing legal solutions to accommodate rights and enforce responsibilities. The Task Force will facilitate interaction between and conduct of workshops for members of the task force, protected area managers and legal researchers.

In the past year, groundwork research directed to the Task Force’s terms of reference has been being carried out under a project established at the University of Ottawa in collaboration with the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, under a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as research support from Parks Canada. This enabled the employment of several senior research assistants under the supervision of Professors Jamie Benidickson and Ben Boer. The research so far has resulted in a range of legal research analyses, a comprehensive electronically accessible bibliography, a matrix for the standardized analysis of protected areas legislation and a detailed list of contents of a preliminary report.

A small workshop in November 2007 in Veracruz, Mexico, focussed on protected areas law and policy and the use of the IUCN categories of protected areas, with a view to generating several case studies for coastal areas and, in particular Ramsar sites in the State of Veracruz.

In 2007 the IUCN Environmental Law Centre initiated a major project on protected areas legislation. The Task Force studies currently being carried out through the SSHRC will also be used to support that project.
As case studies are developed and further research is done, material will be placed on both the CEL and WCPA web sites for the use of the Task Force. The website material will also be accessible to other researchers working in this field.

A workshop for members of the Task Force and development researchers is being planned for the spring of 2008, in order to review the research and case studies developed to that point, and to begin to draft a major report to be presented at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona in October, 2008. That report is intended to include recommendations for the enhancement of legislative and policy frameworks; protected area case studies for different kinds of land tenure and marine tenure; a template for legislative drafting; and a comprehensive bibliography.