Comparing Apples and Apples - Professionalising Protected Area Management through standardised terminology

Target 3 in Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) requires that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and of coastal and marine areas, “are effectively conserved and managed”. Can protected area management align with other global professions to make sure we are comparing apples with apples?

Interest in 30 by 30 among policy makers, practitioners, and researchers has brought a proliferation of terms and their accompanying abbreviations used to describe different types of conservation areas and their governance, planning, management, and monitoring. The lack of standard terms is hindering the use and assessment of area-based approaches to conserve the world’s biodiversity.

 It is difficult to track progress toward GBF Target 3 or to share learning with other practitioners if different groups of people are using different words to describe the same concept or similar words to talk about different concepts. To address this problem, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Protected Areas commissioned a task force to review existing terms and recommend a standard English-language lexicon for this field based on key criteria.

 The standard lexicon can provide a common language for people who want to use it and a shared reference point that can be used to translate various terms used by different groups. The common understanding provided by the lexicon can serve as a foundation for collaborative efforts to improve the policies, implementation, assessments, research, and learning.

The above text is adapted from the abstract of the full article published in Conservation Biology (Salafsky et al 2024). For more information contact Duncan MacRae through SCNP, read the full article here.

 This blog was produced by Duncan MacRae for the Scottish Campaign for National Parks.