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 338

22.13 A New Social Compact for Effective and Just

Conservation

Protected areas will only work, and continue to work in the future, if they are
supported by a broad range of people; the pressures against conservation are too
great for protected areas to survive in the hands of a few enthusiasts. A New Social
Compact is required to bring together people from very different backgrounds, to
work together from a common understanding about values, challenges, and oppor-
tunities. An inspirational platform must be created so that diverse rights holders,
stakeholders, and interest groups can dialogue and commit to building solidarity
in human networks and shared understandings of the intrinsic and functional value
of nature.

22.14 Conclusion

Protected Areas can contribute much to Earth Stewardship. As such, “The Promise
of Sydney” formalized at the 2014 World Parks Congress in Australia, should guide
transformative change over the next generation. Under IUCN's new orientation,
protected areas teach that value is far more than economic. They themselves can be
understood as Earth stewardship in action (Abecasis et al. 2013 ; see Berchez et al.
2015 ; Chapin et al. 2015 , in this volume [Chaps. 12 and 23 ]). Protected areas are
related integrally to human well-being, not only physical but also cultural. They
contribute to justice by protecting traditional and cultural knowledge of indigenous
people and are constant reminders that nature and culture are World Heritages.
Additionally, a biocultural ethic introduces an ecosocial justice perspective that
affi rms that “unsustainable practices that are detrimental to the life of other human
and other-than-human beings need to be sanctioned and/or remedied”. These per-
spectives shall be incorporated in a “new social compact” emerging from the
WPC. Complementarily, the worldviews, forms of knowledge, values, and ecological
practices of cultures that are sustainable should be respected, and eventually adapted
through intercultural exchanges (Rozzi 2013 , p. 10).
IUCN's new orientation aims to better integrate cultural diversity and, at the
same time, to achieve ecojustice. The discourse and action in protected areas for the
next 25 years should be fully integrated into the broader aim of sustainability at all
levels, making this an enhanced cultural feature. Perhaps more importantly, it should
be prioritized as an integral part of planning and resource allocation in the interna-
tional community, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Less than that would
certainly not allow societies around the world to meet their legitimate aspirations in
the IUCN vision of a “just world that values and conserves nature.”