Conservationism Has Not Reached the Seas

Since 1962, the year of the first World Parks Congress, the number of protected areas has jumped from two million square km to over 18 million today. But barely 0.5 percent of the earth's seas and oceans are included in that category.

DURBAN, South Africa - The conservation of wildlife is now the biggest land use in rural parts of the globe and this can become one of the most powerful forces for the alleviation of poverty around the world.

Meanwhile, less than 0.5 percent of seas and oceans form part of protected areas.

Setting aside areas for wildlife is the key message coming out of the World Parks Congress in Durban, a port city on South Africa's Indian Ocean coast, where some 2,000 delegates gathered Sep. 8-17 to discuss the future of game reserves and national parks.

The theme of the congress is how to link conservation with economic growth, job creation and rural development.

The world's protected areas now cover more land than that under permanent, arable crops, making it the most significant form of land use in depressed rural areas, UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer told delegates.

"Since 1962, the year of the first World Parks Congress, the number of (protected) sites has really mushroomed, rising from an area of some two million square km to over 18 million today," Toepfer said.

More than 100,000 protected areas have been established around the world, 90 percent in the last 40 years, according to a report by UNEP and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Among the 10 to 30 percent of the planet's vital natural landscapes, like the Amazon jungles, the Arctic tundra and the tropical African savanna are protected today.

But other biologically and ecologically important ecosystems remain unprotected by conservation legislation. Less than 10 percent of the largest lakes and less than 0.5 percent of seas and oceans form part of natural reserves or parks, says the report.

Toepfer stressed that merely adding to the list of protected areas cannot be an end in itself.

"Put simply, we cannot pat ourselves on the backs if we end up with islands of well-protected wildlife, habitats and ecosystems in a sea of environmental degradation," said the UNEP chief.

* Eddie Koch is a Tierramérica contributor.