Special Issue

Nature Conservation 2010 — 2. 8. 2010 — Special Issue

The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Protected Area Categories: Possibility of

Možnosti jejich turistického využití

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been instrumental in coordinating global protected areas through its World Commission on Protected Areas.

In 1994, IUCN developed standardized guidelines for protected area designation, based on six categories that were intended to represent levels of legislative or re­gulatory protection rather than on biodiversity features (and associated cultural resources) of protected areas. The category system was established to reduce the confusion that had arisen from the adoption of many different terms to describe kinds of protected areas, to provide international standards for global and regional accounting and comparison, and to provide a framework for collecting, handling and disseminating data about protected areas. Despite these advances, the IUCN protected area category system retains a fundamental flaw: because of its focus on management intent is unrelated to the basic goal of promoting the persistence of biodiversity, categories do not reflect the role of protected areas in biodiversity conservation. The IUCN protected area definition, categories and accompanying guidance have recently been revised. The new guidelines were launched at the October 2008 World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. The six categories (one divided into two sub-categories) remain roughly the same. The IUCN protected area categories have been the most respected international standards for territorial protection. The revised definition of what IUCN recognizes as a protected area emphasizes long-term nature conservation. Nevertheless, due to lack of quantitative criteria new guidelines for protected area categorization can also raise the subjective approach in classifying protected areas.