Protected Areas for a Living Planet: approach

The key elements of the Protected Areas for a Living Planet approach to supporting implementation of the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA) are:

1. Ecoregion consultation: During the pre-project phase, key stakeholders (including national and regional governments, NGOs, scientists, civil society organizations, development agencies, donors, and the private sector) are brought together to review ongoing protected areas work and projects and develop an action plan for strategic activities to drive PoWPA implementation.
2. Action Plans for PoWPA delivery: Each ecoregion develops its own specific set of strategic activities and assigns roles and responsibilities among partners for their implementation. The Action Plans developed to date have identified the following key areas of activity:
   - Gap assessment
   - Protected area establishment
   - Management effectiveness
   - Sustainable finance
   - Capacity building
   - Participation of local people and benefit sharing
   - Ensuring enabling legal frameworks
   - Information exchange and establishment of networks of
   protected area specialists
   - Monitoring
3. Multi-stakeholder partnerships: Each ecoregion establishes a multi-stakeholder partnership to steer the implementation of the Action Plan within the ecoregion and support government delivery on the PoWPA. Effective collaboration with partners is a key component of the programme, as it ensures synergies between on-going protected area projects, support to government, links to development, and greater outreach of lessons learned.
   Where possible, partnerships are part of existing ecoregion-level multi-stakeholder processes. At the international level, partnerships with global conservation development NGOs and multilateral agencies will support ecoregion activities through technical assistance, best practice, and capacity building.
   
4. Promoting national PoWPA implementation: By building government capacity and know-how for protected areas work through the implementation of strategic activities, Protected Areas for a Living Planet will stimulate countries towards broader implementation of the PoWPA at the national level.
5. Promoting global PoWPA implementation: Experience and successes from the programme will be strategically used at the international level to set standards for other regions. Lessons learned will be rolled out on a timetable based on the PoWPA targets and will illustrate how these targets can be achieved at the national level.
   
   A scorecard will also be developed to measure delivery on PoWPA targets by governments at the global level, with results highlighted at relevant international fora. WWF experience with scorecards shows that they create a strong incentive for governments to meet their international obligations.
6. Influencing international policy: Experience from the programme's ecoregion projects will be shared between ecoregions and at the international level. The communication of lessons learned at international fora such as the CBD, in collaboration with international partners, will be used to shape the development of international policy on conservation and development.
7. Sustainable finance: At the international level, Protected Areas for a Living Planet will work with donors and partners to increase the amount of funding available globally for protected areas. Relevant innovative financial mechanisms will be promoted and the potential benefits of protected areas to development will be communicated to development agencies. The programme will also work with donors to direct funding towards project sites and related national implementation of the PoWPA, as well as to initiate similar projects in other regions.