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Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany

Protected areas are arguably the most important instrument of biodiversity conservation. To keep them fit under climate change, their management needs to be adapted to address related direct and indirect changes. In our study we focus on the adaptation of conservation management planning, evaluating...

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Autores principales: Geyer, Juliane, Kreft, Stefan, Jeltsch, Florian, Ibisch, Pierre L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5628909/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28982187
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185972
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author Geyer, Juliane
Kreft, Stefan
Jeltsch, Florian
Ibisch, Pierre L.
author_facet Geyer, Juliane
Kreft, Stefan
Jeltsch, Florian
Ibisch, Pierre L.
author_sort Geyer, Juliane
collection PubMed
description Protected areas are arguably the most important instrument of biodiversity conservation. To keep them fit under climate change, their management needs to be adapted to address related direct and indirect changes. In our study we focus on the adaptation of conservation management planning, evaluating management plans of 60 protected areas throughout Germany with regard to their climate change-robustness. First, climate change-robust conservation management was defined using 11 principles and 44 criteria, which followed an approach similar to sustainability standards. We then evaluated the performance of individual management plans concerning the climate change-robustness framework. We found that climate change-robustness of protected areas hardly exceeded 50 percent of the potential performance, with most plans ranking in the lower quarter. Most Natura 2000 protected areas, established under conservation legislation of the European Union, belong to the sites with especially poor performance, with lower values in smaller areas. In general, the individual principles showed very different rates of accordance with our principles, but similarly low intensity. Principles with generally higher performance values included holistic knowledge management, public accountability and acceptance as well as systemic and strategic coherence. Deficiencies were connected to dealing with the future and uncertainty. Lastly, we recommended the presented principles and criteria as essential guideposts that can be used as a checklist for working towards more climate change-robust planning.
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spelling pubmed-56289092017-10-20 Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany Geyer, Juliane Kreft, Stefan Jeltsch, Florian Ibisch, Pierre L. PLoS One Research Article Protected areas are arguably the most important instrument of biodiversity conservation. To keep them fit under climate change, their management needs to be adapted to address related direct and indirect changes. In our study we focus on the adaptation of conservation management planning, evaluating management plans of 60 protected areas throughout Germany with regard to their climate change-robustness. First, climate change-robust conservation management was defined using 11 principles and 44 criteria, which followed an approach similar to sustainability standards. We then evaluated the performance of individual management plans concerning the climate change-robustness framework. We found that climate change-robustness of protected areas hardly exceeded 50 percent of the potential performance, with most plans ranking in the lower quarter. Most Natura 2000 protected areas, established under conservation legislation of the European Union, belong to the sites with especially poor performance, with lower values in smaller areas. In general, the individual principles showed very different rates of accordance with our principles, but similarly low intensity. Principles with generally higher performance values included holistic knowledge management, public accountability and acceptance as well as systemic and strategic coherence. Deficiencies were connected to dealing with the future and uncertainty. Lastly, we recommended the presented principles and criteria as essential guideposts that can be used as a checklist for working towards more climate change-robust planning. Public Library of Science 2017-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5628909/ /pubmed/28982187 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185972 Text en © 2017 Geyer et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Geyer, Juliane
Kreft, Stefan
Jeltsch, Florian
Ibisch, Pierre L.
Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany
title Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany
title_full Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany
title_fullStr Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany
title_full_unstemmed Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany
title_short Assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—The case of Germany
title_sort assessing climate change-robustness of protected area management plans—the case of germany
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5628909/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28982187
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185972
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