Geography
Conservation Planning
Conservation planning involves the systematic assessment of natural resources and the development of strategies to protect and sustainably manage them. It aims to balance human needs with the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystems. This process typically involves identifying priority areas for conservation, setting goals, and implementing measures to achieve long-term environmental sustainability.
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11 Key excerpts on "Conservation Planning"
- J. Gordon Nelson, J. Chadwick Day, Lucy M. Sportza, James Loucky, Carlos Vasquez(Authors)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- University of Calgary Press(Publisher)
Introduction The overall context for this paper is the role of parks and protected areas in conservation. In the sense used here, conservation deals with the appropriate balance of different types of land and water use, ranging from preservation to intense exploitation (Nelson 1987). The goal of conservation is to maintain, restore, and enhance ecosystem integrity, health, and sustainability, over the long term. A number of bodies of knowledge were reviewed in preparing this paper. Their contributions to regional planning for protected areas and conservation are summarized in table 5.1. Some brief notes on the differ-ent bodies of knowledge are offered below. However, the focus of this paper is on integrating the ideas to develop some preliminary criteria for the creation of regional planning approaches for protected areas and con-servation. A common theme that the bodies of knowledge share is a need for major changes in the way planning, management, and decision-making are undertaken to help address complex goals such as conservation and sustainability. Writers in bioregionalism (Sale 1985) and conservation biology (Noss and Cooperrider 1994), noted that the approach they pro-posed was significantly different than traditional paradigms; for example, resource management. Ecosystem management, when considered in its more biocentric form, implies a focus on, or concern about, all living beings and it is used in ecosystem management. Its antonym is anthropo-centric or human-centered. A biocentric emphasis represents a major revision in traditional planning and management approaches. The shift from more traditional, natural resource management approaches to more recent ideas of ecosystem management includes: • a world view that is more comprehensive and holistic Biocentric means focused on, or concerned about, all living beings, not just humans.
eBook - ePub- Gareth E. Jones(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Increasingly, we are placing the responsibility of caring for the biosphere into the hands of the planner and the legislator. By so doing it appears that we accept that mankind cannot voluntarily behave in a responsible fashion towards the biosphere; instead we are prepared to accept a form of compulsion through planning control.Planning for ConservationConservation Planning in its strictest sense, in which habitats and species are given total conservation, is comparatively rare. Instead, Conservation Planning is usually combined with at least one other planning objective, for example, with tourism, recreation, or rehabilitation of derelict sites.Allocation of land to exclusive conservation use is restricted by: 1. Scarcity of land, water and air resources which, in turn, makes multiple use of biosphere resources inevitable.2. Conservation is judged to be an expensive land use. There is no recognisable and immediate return in terms of a ‘productive harvest’ from conservation land use. Instead, Conservation Planning deals with long-term ‘futures’ some of which may not reach fruition for many years.Of the many attempts to improve the commitment to conservation control none can exceed that which exists in the USA. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 represents a major bench-mark in the planning and legislative control of environmental deterioration. The Act requires every new federal development to include in its planning application a statement indicating quite clearly how the proposed development would affect the environment (Cheremisinoff et al , 1977).In practice the National Environmental Policy Act has become strangled by legislative red tape. Environmental management has not made the hoped-for breakthrough originally intended by the act. Some ten years after the act passed the House of Representatives, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature made public its World Conservation Strategy
eBook - PDFSustainable Development as a Civilizational Revolution
A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Challenges of the 21st Century
- Artur Pawlowski(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
The necessity to maintain a balance in nature was also highlighted, hence the need to consider nature’s requirements in economic activities. • The planning approach. Such an approach stresses the importance of sys-tems larger than biocoenosis—the landscape level is treated as an integral biological entity. Wodziczko also sees the basic goals for nature conservation in a threefold manner. The goals are (Wodziczko, 1948): • Conserver goals: preserving the remaining enclaves of wildlife. The motiva-tion for protection includes idealistic issues, scientific issues, aesthetic issues, and historical-memorial issues. 86 • Socio-economic goals: maintaining the ‘life force’ of nature, which is particularly important in the case of the economic use of the environment. • Landscape goals: referring to planning tasks and related to the restoration of devastated landscapes, also in human places of residence. It needs to be pointed out that nature conservation is a specific race against time. A devastated environment can never be restored to its former state; the same applies to genetic resources of extinct species, which are irretrievably lost. The level of our pressure on the environment is expressed by a number of indicators, of which the Living Planet Index (LPI) is worth mentioning. It shows how, within a single generation (since 1970), 30% of the world’s natu-ral resources were destroyed (Living Planet Report, 2006). Despite this quite apocalyptic image, many enclaves of natural types of environment still remain, which makes it all the more necessary to protect them. This is achieved through establishing national parks and nature reserves and by introducing other forms of nature conservation. The basic ecological unit that can be put under protection is the ecosystem. This fundamental notion can be defined (Krebs, 1998) as all the living organisms (biocoenosis) living in a particular space and time with their inanimate surround-ings (biotope).
eBook - PDF- Graeme Worboys, Michael Lockwood, Ashish Kothari, Ian Pulsford(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- ANU Press(Publisher)
The analysis showed that most of the land-cover types are well represented, although many of these reserves are ecologically isolated. In addition, this exercise provided valuable data on the location of important conservation areas in the region and this information has already helped inform local land-use decisions. In particular, EKZNW used the summed solution map to identify where new eucalyptus plantations should not be located, illustrating the role of conservation assessments in reducing the risk of losing important biodiversity. Source: Adapted from Smith et al. (2006) Case Study 13.5 Using systematic Conservation Planning in Mozambique and South Africa Protected Area Governance and Management 402 preparation of plans for certain categories of reserve and there is now more direct involvement of park managers and the community in the preparation of management plans. Time frames for plan preparation have been condensed and the use of planning manuals and standard plan formats with some generic sections such as zoning has assisted this trend. Some plans for larger parks have adopted a performance-based approach that specifies outcomes sought for each of the major planning components (for example, resource protection, access, recreation and tourism) and strategies with performance measures and indicators. Performance-based approaches comprise two components: first, criteria that describe the desired end result, and second, methods to define standards used to measure the acceptable limits of impacts to ensure the desired end result (such as recreation impacts). This style of plan provides for certainty through a clearly articulated desired end state. The approach allows for flexibility in the approach to be adopted to achieve the end result. The South African Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (2005) used gap analysis to determine Conservation Planning priorities for the forest biome of South Africa.
eBook - PDFDesign with the Desert
Conservation and Sustainable Development
- Richard Malloy, John Brock, Anthony Floyd, Margaret Livingston, Robert H. Webb(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
236 Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development future generations but must strive to expand them by passing on an environment and an accumulation of resources that will allow its children to live at least as well as, and preferably better than, people today. Sustainable development is premised on living within the Earth’s means. 16 Scandurra and Budoni have stated the underlying premise for sustainability especially well and succinctly. That is, “The planet cannot be considered as a gigantic source of unlimited raw materials, neither, equally, as a gigantic dump where we can dispose of all waste from our activities.” 17 The environment is both a source and a sink, but has limited capacities to provide resources and to assimilate wastes indefinitely. Beatley and Manning 18 relate sustainable development to ecological planning. They note that “McHargian-style environmental analysis… [has] become a commonplace method-ological step in undertaking almost any form of local planning.” 19 They note, however, that, although such analyses are “extremely important… a more comprehensive and holis-tic approach is required.” 19 The steps that follow attempt to provide a more comprehensive approach. 13.2.1 Step 1: Identification of Planning Problems and Opportunities Human societies face many social, economic, political, and environmental problems and opportunities. Since a landscape is the interface between social and environmental processes, landscape planning addresses those issues that concern the interrelationship between people and nature. The planet presents many opportunities for people, and there is no shortage of environmental problems. Problems and opportunities lead to specific planning issues. For instance, suburban development occurs on prime agricultural land, which local officials consider a problem.
eBook - PDF- Murat Ozyavuz(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- IntechOpen(Publisher)
Ecological landscape plans present a significant opportunity for implementing landscape conservation approaches and for contributing to the sustainability of landscapes. Ecological landscape planning has five stages: division into landscapes, inventory of nature conservation value and socio-cultural factors, landscape analysis, landscape plan, regeneration of biotopes (SCA Skog, 2011). The following section presents an overview of landscape ecology and details its principles and their use in landscape planning. The third section discusses the integration of ecological planning approaches in landscape planning, the fourth section coastal zone planning. 2. Landscape ecology principles and landscape planning What landscape planning signifies today used to be considered within the concept land use planning until three decades ago. Landscape planning, as a concept, emerged due to the growing awareness and concerns about problems and the developments that took place in the society (Marsh, 2005). Although similar at first sight with land use planning, as both of Landscape Planning 234 them deal with the macro environment, landscape planning focuses on the resources and systems of landscape in the planning and management decisions. Coined in the late 1930s and developed thanks to aerial photography, landscape ecology originally focused on the spatial patterns created by the environment and vegetation. Ecology studies the interactions of organisms with their environment, and a landscape is a mosaic with ecosystems and land uses. Landscape ecology focuses on heterogeneous land mosaics, where the distribution, movement and flow of living beings and materials could be easily observed and foreseen. The principles of landscape ecology, particularly taking the landscape as the unit of study, later gained prominence in landscape planning.
eBook - PDFEcological Governance
Reappraising Law's Role in Protecting Ecosystem Functionality
- Olivia Woolley(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Bundesamt für Naturschutz, ‘Landscape Planning: The Basis of Sustainable Landscape Development’ (2008). 97 Ibid. 172 ecological planning corresponding emphasis on identifying justifiable compromises between competing concerns, conflicts with its use to promote outcomes, and that this must be overcome if the system is to have a part in setting an environmentally desirable course. 98 The reality, however, is that the lack of a clear statement of the system’s purpose in the legal framework for planning at any stage in its history has allowed successive govern- ments to use it as a blank canvas on which to paint ideological visions of how economic and social activities should be conducted. 99 For example, Haughton and Counsell argue that sustainable development policies, in combination with the introduction of sustainability assessment as a tool for shaping regional and local plans, have been used to tie planning strategies at all scales ‘into a single form of rationality based on Central Government’s own integrated definition of what sustainable develop- ment means’. 100 The current UK Government seeks to promote a pref- erence for development in local planning, save where its adverse impacts ‘would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits’, through its adoption of a National Planning Policy Framework that equates sustainability with sustained economic growth. 101 The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution questions the wisdom of maintaining legal structures for planning that are liable to ‘oscillate between. . . the competing ‘ideologies’ of planning law. . .’ because they are ‘infused with such a degree of discretion’.
eBook - PDFManaging and Designing Landscapes for Conservation
Moving from Perspectives to Principles
- David B. Lindenmayer, Richard J. Hobbs, David B. Lindenmayer, Richard J. Hobbs(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
In this chapter, I examine the need to prioritize conservation activities, particularly in relation to ecological restoration carried out in a conservation context. The chapter is partially based on material that originally appeared in Hobbs (2005). Restoration and conservation management are increasingly viewed as complementary activities, Richard J. Hobbs 512 Landscape-Scale Restoration . 513 with restoration often now forming an important element of conservation management (Dobson et al . 1997; Young 2000). Why restoration? Ecological restoration can be carried out for a number of reasons. Sometimes the aim is to restore highly disturbed, but localized sites, such as mine sites. In this case restoration often entails amelioration of the physical and chemical characteristics of the substrate and ensuring the return of vegetation cover. In other cases the aim is to improve the productive capability in degraded pro-duction lands. Restoration in these cases aims to return the system to a sus-tainable level of productivity by, for instance, reversing or ameliorating soil erosion or salinization problems in agricultural or range lands. More pertinent to the topic of this book, however, is the use of restoration to enhance nature conservation values in protected landscapes by reversing the impacts of various degrading forces, for example, by removing an invasive animal or plant from a protected area. In addition to this patch-based restora-tion, broader-scale restoration may also be required to restore ecological processes over landscape-scale or regional areas. This will include the rein-statement of broad-scale connectivity, disturbance regimes and flows of biota, water and nutrients (e.g. Soulé et al . 2004). There is an increasing recognition that protected areas alone will not con-serve biodiversity in the long term, and that production and protection lands are linked by landscape-scale processes and flows (e.g. hydrology, movement of biota).
- Jane Silberstein M.A., Chris Maser(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
134 Land-Use Planning for Sustainable Development Protecting Diversity through Constraints to Development and Land Use Planning Central to the integrity and sustainability of natural capital is biodiversity in all its aspects. While is not within the scope of this book to deal at length with the myriad ways a community or society can protect the diversity of nature—the wealth of society—for the benefit of all generations, we shall do our best to point out an array of options that we think will bear fruit of suf-ficient quality to make their cultivation worthwhile. Habitat The protection of habitat as part of our land use practices is used as the example because quality habitat is the basis of biological, genetic, and func-tional diversity, the sum of which is the basis of natural wealth and thus eco-nomic viability, which in turn equates to long-term community well-being. Habitat is composed of food, water, shelter, space, and privacy. The quality of the habitat depends on the quality and interconnectivity of these five items. Further, the environment dictates the composition of the species of plants, which creates a particular structure, in turn allowing processes and func-tions to occur within time and space to create the living portion of habitats for wildlife and people. People and nature are continually changing this ecosystem or that ecosys-tem by manipulating the composition of its plants and thereby the system’s structure and function, which subsequently changes the composition of the animals dependent on the structure and function of the resultant habitat. By altering the composition of plants within an ecosystem, people and nature alter its structure, which in turn affects how it functions, in turn determining not only what kinds of and how many animals can live there but also what uses humans can make out of the ecosystem.
- Gupta, V K(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Daya Publishing House(Publisher)
Conservationists throughout the globe are much concerned about the threatening situations prevailing in different terrestrial and aquatic biomes, that are increasingly leading towards the change in climatic conditions as well as depletion in natural resources. Alarmed by these threats, several conservation strategies and programmes have been adopted in different countries of the world to sustain the natural resources and green environment. India, being recognized as a country of megadiversity for biological resources, has been in the process of conserving the same for decades through a variety of in situ management programmes. With a view to keep the natural ecosystems and other landscapes of natural importance unaltered, such in situ management programmes are either run by the Government or non-Government initiatives in different parts of the country. However, much of the general people and even amateurs in different sectors but related to wildlife and biodiversity conservation, are aware of such implemented programmes as well as the way they interact and act in our country. Understanding the gap in knowledge regarding the network of in situ conservation programmes and the importance of management at the landscape level in India, the author of the present text has proposed a framework under the concept of “Conservation Land”. The latter may help in better understanding of the different in situ conservation programmes running in India and also a way of integrating them towards better protection and maintenance of the different ecosystems of the country. 1. Understanding the Levels of Biodiversity The term ‘biodiversity’ is formed by a contraction of the term biological diversity . The term ‘biodiversity’ was coined by Walter G. Rosen in 1985 (UNEP, 1995), which is commonly used to describe the number, variety and variability of living organisms.
eBook - PDF- Andrew S. Pullin(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
It is the construction and approval process of action plans that offers the best opportunity for getting evidence-based action into conservation practice and also for identifying areas where scientific research is required. Let us first look at the typical form of an action plan and then explore ways of incorporating evidence. The most common form of action plan is probably the reserve man-agement plan. The typical content of such a plan is summarised in Table 15.2. This format has generally been followed by reserve managers and conservation organisations that own or manage reserves. As a frame-work it is very useful and encourages reserve managers to think ahead and formulate objectives rather than just dealing with the day-to-day FORMULATION OF ACTION PLANS 313 Sections of management plan Content of section Description of site Location, size, site history, geology, topography, climate, soils, hydrology, general ecological classification, position within the surrounding landscape, current use Conservation Historic and current conservation status, evaluation features of value on the site (species diversity, naturalness, representative communities), threats to site, potential value, specific species of note Management aims Hydrology, plant communities, specific species, and objectives education and research Limitations and Limitations of site, natural processes, outside constraints influences, disturbance, pollution, problem species, legal constraints, resources, safety Management Specific projects, rationale, objectives (including prescription definitions of success), work schedule, research plans and methodology Monitoring of Project monitoring and evaluation, time scale actions and project reporting Appendices Maps, data sheets, protocols Table 15.2 Summary of the typical content of a reserve management plan challenges, but it does not encourage the use of scientific evidence to formulate actions.
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