News about conservation often seems like an endless battle to merely slow the decline of nature.
Each year, lists such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list and the Unesco list of World Heritage In Danger grow, as more and more plants and animals inch closer to extinction and protected areas are degraded.
But a new list being developed by the IUCN aims to highlight positive steps being taken around the world to protect nature.
“It’s a bit like the flipside to the World Heritage In Danger list,” says University of Queensland’s Marc Hockings – the global lead on the green list for the IUCN.
Hockings says he came up with the idea of a green list about 10 years ago, as a way of setting a standard for how protected areas should be managed. The IUCN green list of protected and conserved areas is meant to celebrate successfully protected areas, and help other protected areas lift their standards by showcasing successful examples.
Since the once-a-decade World Parks Congress in 2004, the international conservation community recognised that while the world was increasing the amount of land and water that was formally protected, there was relatively little data about whether any management practices were in place to actually protect those areas. Read More
