McNeely, Jeffrey A.

RERO DOC Digital Library

CONFERENCES & MEETINGSFOURTH WORLD CONGRESS ON NATIONAL PARKSAND PROTECTED AREAS, HELD IN CARACAS,VENEZUELA, DURING 10—21 FEBRUARY 1992On the above auspicious occasion the 1,840 parti-cipants from 133 different countries addressed collec-tively the major challenges facing protected areas in the1990s, and, hopefully, beyond — based on the theme of'Parks for Life'.The Congress was opened by Venezuelan PresidentCarlos Andres Perez, and there followed three technicalplenaries — respectively on broad issues, expanding part-nerships, and regional reviews. Then came four parallelsymposia which examined the scientific, development,management, and social-economic, issues and introduceda week of workshops. Over 1,000 papers were presented tothe 49 workshops, which all fed back to the fifth plenary,where the Congress Recommendations, Action Plan, andDeclaration, were debated. A sixth plenary session showedhow the new approaches that were discussed in theworkshops are actually being applied in the field. The finalplenary approved the Declaration and Congress Recom-mendations, and President Andres Perez handed theDeclaration to Maurice Strong, Secretary-General of theUnited Nations Conference on Environment and Deve-lopment, to pass on to the 'Earth Summit' in Rio in June.In building on the experience of the past decade, theCongress provided advice on what is required to helppeople on the ground to carry out their important workmore effectively than hitherto, while recognizing thatevery site has its own particular solutions to its oftenunique problems. More generally, the Congress providedpolicy advice to governments and international agenciesto help to ensure that investments in development willhelp to support protected areas, and not degrade them.The Caracas Action Plan details the elements of amajor new effort to improve protected-area management,with 12 priority objectives. One of these objectives is toextend the protected-areas network to cover at least 10%of each major ecobiome by the year 2000. Another callsfor establishing a global network of representative andwell-managed marine protected areas.To keep pace with the new realities that are facingprotected areas in a time of increasing expectations andfalling budgets, the Congress urged the development ofnew reward systems that reach local communities andspread the benefits of protected areas in a more equitablemanner than is common nowadays. It initiated investmentportfolios to draw on new financial support-mechanismsthat have sprung up in the past decade. It urged thatpersonnel be recruited from local communities — espe-cially from tribal and other minorities. The Congress alsorecognized that the military, in a time of changing natio-nal-security needs, can play an important part in con-servation, and called for greater efforts to involve them asallies in support of protected areas.Finally, the IV World Congress recognized thattraining of protected-area managers needs to be far moresophisticated than hitherto, building skills in both naturaland social sciences — including community relations,gender sensitivity, conflict resolution, and informationmanagement.In seeking to convert these general recommendationsinto reality, the Congress called on IUCN to prepare along-term programme for protected areas based on theCaracas Action Plan. The programme should set out whatneeds to be done, where and by whom, building on natio-nal priorities and global environmental perspectives.Apart from the official documents, the Congressgenerated plans for more than 20 publications and dozensof sets of guidelines to appear over the next two-to-threeyears.Congress participants had no illusions about theseverity of the problems which they will be facing in thecoming years. Tomorrow's conflicts will tend to be evenmore difficult than today's, as resource scarcity,economic imbalance, and continuing use of inappropriatetechnology, form a witch's brew of challenges toprotected areas — and indeed to sustainable use of theenvironment as a whole. But participants were convincedthat such challenges mean that protected areas have anever-more-important part to play in securing a productivefuture for humanity.JEFFREY A. MCNEELY, Secretary-GeneralIV World Congress on National Parksand Protected AreasChief Conservation Officer of IUCN1196 Gland, Switzerland.INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON PHYSICAL PRO-BLEMS OF ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGE-MENT, AND RESOURCES CONSERVATION, HELD ONBOARD THE 4-DECKS' BOAT 'FYODOR CHALYAPIN'*IN A CRUISE MOSCOW-KAZAN-MOSCOW ALONGTHE RIVER VOLGA, FROM 31 MAY TO 9 JUNE 1992Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Kazakh-stan, England, Germany, France, Italy, and othercountries took part in this first such Symposium, theprogramme of which had been developed by an Inter-national Scientific Committee. The Institute of Scien-tific-Applied Researches 'AERO' (Izhevsk) was theprincipal organizer and sponsor, though among the orga-nizers were also the Udmurt Scientific Centre of the UralBranch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the StateCommittee on Ecology and Environment Management ofthe Udmurt Republic, and the Scientific Research Centreon Computational Methods in Fluid Mechanics of theUniversity of Marseilles, France.The participants included 20 doctors and over 100candidates of various sciences, academicians and corres-ponding members from different republican Academiesof Sciences, chairmen of State Committees on Ecologyfrom the Volga and Kama regions and the Urals, heads ofenterprises, and leaders of scientific and industrial com-mercial concerns.An exhibition of ecological devices, equipment, andtechnologies, was organized, and agreements on cooper-ation on scientific research work were negotiated andsigned on board the 4-decker. The Symposium was held ina creative and fruitful atmosphere, and during stays incities in the Volga region meetings took place with repre-sentatives of ecological societies and state ecologicalbodies.The latest results in the fields of aerohydrodynamics,environment and microclimate of cities and settlements,ecological monitoring of populated areas, physico-chemi-cal methods for investigating environmental situations,* The great Russian bass singer, whose superb portrait, paintedby my late Mother against the background of a Royal Albert Hall,London, evening-dressed audience, hangs in our dining-room. — Ed.89Environmental Conservation, Vol. 20, Nr 1, Spring 1993 — © 1993 The Foundation for Environmental Conservation — Printed in Switzerlandhttps:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892900037371Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 13:50:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

Fourth World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas, held in Caracas, Venezuela, during 10-21 February 1992

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

RERO DOC Digital Library