1.Front section - IUCN

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Friends for Life: New partners in support of protected areas
The development assistance response
Many development assistance agencies today focus
their support for biodiversity conservation and
protected areas at the macro policy level through the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD
was one of several major initiatives stemming from
the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which
together form an international agreement on
sustainable development. The Convention now has
188 Parties, which reflects a worldwide recognition
that human activities are changing and destroying
habitats and natural ecosystems on an increasing
scale, with unprecedented loss of species. Parties
recognise that action must be taken to halt this global
loss of animal and plant species and genetic resources
and that each country has the primary responsibility to
conserve and enhance biodiversity within its own
jurisdiction. At the same time, they agree to develop
national strategies, plans and programmes for the
conservation and sustainable use of biological
diversity, and to share resources to help implement
such programmes.
The most recent manifestation of support was the
adoption of an ambitious programme of work on
protected areas by the Parties to the CBD in February
2004. This programme of work is one of the most
significant documents adopted by the CBD. It sets clear
targets, including the establishment of a global network
of comprehensive, representative and effectively
managed protected area systems. Emphasis is also
placed on strengthening the management of protected
areas and ensuring that the costs and benefits of
protected areas are equitably shared. Time will now tell
if development assistance will be available to support
this bold programme of work.
However, the move by development assistance
agencies to focus their work on poverty reduction as
their primary goal, and sustainable development as a
broad strategy to meet this, has meant that protected
areas are not a high priority for funding. In fact, a
number of development assistance agencies no longer
have units within their structure to specifically deal
with biodiversity conservation. This cutting of their
own institutional support network for conservation
activities is a clear indication of where development
assistance agencies have set their priorities.
While governments are well aware of the three
pillars of sustainable development, the market
economy has taken priority over social development
and environmental concerns in recent decades. The
market economy is seen as the primary force for
poverty reduction and attention to the environment
and natural resources is primarily utilitarian.
References to natural resources now concern their
provision for use by society and that of the
environment to quality issues related to health.
In the early years of development assistance it was
common for aid funds to be invested in ‘institutional
support’ for government agencies in developing
countries. International advisers were sent to work
within the host institutions. Later the drive for
accountability and the need for international donors to
be able to target their support more precisely led to the
emergence of the ‘development project’ as the main
delivery mechanism. This meant that donors worked
with their national counterparts to define discrete,
time-bound packages of development assistance.
These packages have allowed donors to apply their
own accountability mechanisms and allowed
development to be reduced to bite-sized components
for which donors can assume responsibility and take
credit (Sayer and Wells, 2004).
This trend away from institutional support and
towards projects has been reflected in international
development agency support for biodiversity
conservation. Early aid programmes supported game
rangers, wardens, researchers and others working
within national protected area programmes. As
international donor support for biodiversity
conservation has been significantly reduced over the
last five years, protected areas often have been at the
top of the list when it comes to cutting expenditures as
governments aim to balance their budgets and meet
other development objectives. The external funds
available for protected areas continue to shrink despite
ever-increasing demands on these areas to provide
clean air and water, tourism and recreational
opportunities, in addition to the protection of
biodiversity and the ecosystem processes that support
it. Against this backdrop, protected area managers
have no choice but to master the language of values
and benefits that protected areas represent and adopt
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