IUCN/WCPA Protected Areas Program: Making Space for People and Biodiversity in the Anthropocene - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 331

value to its conservation. Instead conservation is conducted with an anthropocentric
focus on “resource” scarcity that drives decision making processes.
To confront global environmental change, the Ecological Society of America
(ESA) has launched the “Earth Stewardship” initiative (Chapin et al. 2011 ). This
initiative provides a synergistic approach with the Global Protected Areas Program
of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its World
Commission on Protected Areas. IUCN's program supports countries and commu-
nities to designate and manage systems of protected areas on land and in the oceans.
However, both the IUCN Global Protected Areas Program and the ESA Earth
Stewardship initiative confront serious limitations of geographic biases. Not only
geographic regions, but also cultural diversity needs to be better represented in both
initiatives (Rozzi et al. 2012 ; Li et al. 2015 , in this volume [Chap. 13 ] ). In this chapter
we present a concise overview of the current status of preparations for the IUCN VI
World Parks Congress (WPC), which offer a timely option to orient protected areas
toward novel modes of stewardship for the well-being of humans and biodiversity
as a whole.

22.1.1 IUCN World Parks Congresses

A driving force highlighting the importance of protected areas and proposing poli-
cies regarding them, have been the various WPC organized by the IUCN with the
leadership of the World Commission on Protected Areas and the IUCN Global
Protected Areas Program, which have been recognized as harbingers of change: a
unique, once-in-a-decade meeting in which protected area professionals come
together to share their practices, discuss policy, and meet people from very different
parts of the world, who are working towards a common goal and often face similar
professional challenges. Each WPC also has created a groundswell of change by
introducing new ideas, launching new commitments, and signaling important devel-
opments in policy. These Congresses stand out as a series of milestones in the devel-
opment of the world's protected area system (Phillips 2003 ; Dudley et al. 2005 ).
In 2003, the fi fth WPC in Durban, South Africa, opened with a moving speech
by Nelson Mandela and his call for more involvement of youth, and created the bulk
of the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) Program of Work on
Protected Areas (POWPA) (CBD 2004 ), which remains a basic reference and key
strategy statement for protected area development (Fig. 22.1 ). But many essential
aspects did not get much attention in Durban. By their nature, global policies
quickly become dated, as we learn more and as conditions change: yesterday's
preoccupations quickly fade away and new issues emerge into the mainstream.
A broader range of issues is refl ected in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-
2020 that was agreed at the tenth Conference of the Parties to the CBD in Nagoya,
Japan in 2010 (CBD 2010 ). A new target for increasing protected areas to 17 % on
landscapes and 10 % on seascapes is juxtaposed with objectives for many other