1.Front section - IUCN

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Friends for Life: New partners in support of protected areas
Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania.
© Jeffrey A. McNeely
And finally, we need to recognise that new
challenges require new knowledge. A vigorous
research capacity is an essential element of building
support for protected areas. In seeking to encourage
universities, research institutions and others to carry
out research that is essential and relevant to successful
protected areas, the international community should
promote the following kinds of actions:
● strengthen the institutional capacity of research
institutions in each region, including universities,
museums and field stations;
● support long-term ecological research sites
located in protected areas;
● mobilize local indigenous and traditional
knowledge about species, ecosystems, resource
management systems, traditional laws and
regulations, and so forth;
● incorporate research components in major
development projects that affect protected areas;
● support cooperative research programmes, for
example between animal and human health and
protected areas; and
● support broader studies of the operation of
economic systems as they affect protected areas
and biodiversity, focusing on macro-economic
policy and development strategies in attempting to
provide more general conclusions about the
relationship between development and natural
resource management.
It is hoped that enlisting new partners will result in
broader support for protected areas in all parts of the
world. If civil society can become an active partner in
the management of protected areas, then we could see
a new era of conservation – an era in which civil
societies have the will and the means to assume an
effective stewardship role over their own resources,
conserving biological diversity, using biological
resources sustainably, and ensuring that the benefits of
such use are distributed in a fair and equitable manner.
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