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Protected Areas, Biodiversity, and the Risks of Climate Change

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Ecosystem-Based Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation in Practice

Part of the book series: Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research ((NTHR,volume 42))

Abstract

Protected areas are becoming a major land use, approaching 15 % of the Earth’s terrestrial surface and a growing percentage of coastal waters. These sites are popular for visitors, but face many management challenges, including how to adapt to climate change. Often established for biodiversity conservation, scenic beauty, or tourism objectives, protected areas should become a major part of national strategies to address climate change and the disasters that may come in the form of extreme climatic events. Protected areas often contain the ecosystems that are the most effective in storing carbon and make major contributions to adapting to climate change. But these sites need to be managed more effectively, and linking them to the growing public concern about climate change could be one means of doing so. Management approaches that should be supported include establishing protected area complexes that expand their influence to a landscape scale, incorporating climate change issues into protected management at both site and system scales, identify the multiple ecosystem services that protected areas provide as a means of building broader support for them, and many others. Protected areas can also contribute to recovery from extreme hazard events, for example by working with local communities to restore natural vegetation. To date, protected areas have been largely ignored by the Clean Development Mechanism established by the Climate Change Convention. This should change, and protected areas should be recognized for the many contributions they make to climate change mitigation and adaptation, thereby contributing to reducing disaster risks. A relatively simple step would be to incorporate protected area agencies more actively in the preparation of the national reports called for by the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Protected areas should also become eligible for support under the REDD+ programme.

Note that a useful decision-support tool is now available to help protected area managers identify climate risks and integrate them into site management. See www.iisd.org/cristaltool/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Hua Hin Thailand, 1445/29 Petchkasem Road, Saitai, Cha Am, Petchburi, 76021, Thailand

    Jeffrey A. McNeely

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  1. Jeffrey A. McNeely
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Correspondence to Jeffrey A. McNeely .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Environment and Human Secu, United Nations University, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Fabrice G. Renaud

  2. Commission on Ecosystem Management, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Switzerland

    Karen Sudmeier-Rieux

  3. Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch, United Nations Environment Programme, Geneva, Switzerland

    Marisol Estrella

  4. Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics (ITT), TH Köln, University of Applied Sciences, Köln, Germany

    Udo Nehren

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McNeely, J.A. (2016). Protected Areas, Biodiversity, and the Risks of Climate Change. In: Renaud, F., Sudmeier-Rieux, K., Estrella, M., Nehren, U. (eds) Ecosystem-Based Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation in Practice. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43633-3_17

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