Protected Areas and Resilient Landscapes: Project Finance for Permanence in Colombia, Perú and Bhutan

Protected areas and other conserved areas, such as indigenous and community conserved lands and sacred natural areas, have played a critical role in biodiversity conservation for the past century. Beyond providing a haven for species, these areas also provide vital ecosystem services that sustain livelihoods, connect landscapes, capture and store carbon, and inspire people to value the natural world. Governments, protected area managers and conservation groups alike often neglect the increasing risk that climate change poses to protected areas and the ecosystem services they provide. Most planners and managers of the world’s protected areas do not consider climate risks, instead relying on traditional approaches to conservation that are rapidly becoming obsolete with increased warming and climate variability. WWF believes that a viable future for people and nature mandates that conservation efforts and strategies–including the management of protected and other conserved areas–are continuously updated to account for unavoidable climate change risks to biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services. National governments have a vested interest in doing so to ensure that protected areas continue to deliver on commitments to their citizens and to the UNFCCC, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This contribution will focus on guiding Parties to centrally incorporate these ideas into revised NDCs for 2020.