MEDIA KIT: World Parks Congress

Global changes are threatening the 102,101 parks and protected areas around the world -- or about 13 percent of the world's land area. These changes include a growing population, climate change, and invasive alien species. Some 2,500 experts from 170 countries will grapple with these problems as they meet for the 5th World Parks Congress, September 8-17, 2003, in Durban, South Africa.

See also Media Kit for WRR 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems, The Fraying Web of Life. This report is the latest and most comprehensive report on the state of the world's ecosystems. It focuses on the goods and services that ecosystems -- including parks and protected areas -- provide.

News releases

• 2003 August 19. "Experts warn global changes threaten world's protected areas". Global changes are threatening the world's parks and protected areas. There are 102,101 of them which cover nearly 13 percent of the world's land area.

Publications and papers

Authors: World Commission on Protected Areas. 2003. A guide to securing protected areas in the face of global change: Options and guidelines. Distributed for comment at the 5th World Parks Congress, this guide seeks to help protected area managers, policy makers, and stakeholders learn to deal with the factors of global change that will have growing impacts on their areas in the coming decades.

Related links

• IUCN-The World Conservation Union: World Parks Congress
  http://www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa/wpc2003/
  Official site of the 5th World Parks Congress organized by the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) and IUCN-The World Conservation Union. WRI's Dr. Kenton Miller chairs the WCPA and the international steering committee of the congress (2003).