The role of the IUCN UK National Committee’s Protected Areas Working Group (PAWG) is to provide independent strategic analysis and advice in support of the UK Government’s aspiration to protect 30% of the UK’s land and 30% of its seas by 2030, thus demonstrating leadership in this area of conservation policy and practice.
PAWG aims to support the UK Government and the devolved administrations in their application of the IUCN definitions and guidance on Protected Areas (PAs) and Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs). It will also assess what opportunities there are in informing, or interest from, the UK Overseas Territories and the three UK Crown Dependencies in such thinking.
| PAWG Membership: |
| Chair: Dr James Robinson – IUCNUK.PAWG@wwt.org.uk Chris Mahon, Chief Executive, IUCN National Committee Stephen Grady, Joint Nature Conservation Committee Pamela Abbott, independent David Stroud, independent Kate Jennings, RSPB Katherine Hawkins, The Wildlife Trusts Ben McCarthy, The National Trust Mike Pienkowski, UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum Howard Davies, independent |
| Secretariat: Jane Gawthorne-Dover, Conservation Support Manager, WWT |
The Group will be supported by a number of advisors and will include representatives of the UK Government and the devolved administrations, and the statutory nature conservation bodies. The membership of the Group will be under constant review as the project establishes.
New technical report publication
The Protected Areas Working Group (PAWG), an expert working group for the IUCN National Committee UK (NCUK), has published a new technical report entitled ‘Statements of Compliance for UK protected areas and ‘other effective area-based conservation measures’: 2023 review’ .
The role of PAWG is to provide independent strategic analysis and advice in support of the UK Government’s aspiration to protect 30% of the UK’s land and 30% of its seas by 2030, thus demonstrating international leadership in this area of conservation policy and practice. PAWG aims to support the UK Government and the devolved administrations in their application of the IUCN definitions and guidance on protected areas and other area-based conservation measures. PAWG’s Statements of Compliance provide guidance to the UK Government and its agencies, and the devolved administrations, on which types of site should be incorporated within the 30% totals in order to conform with international standards.
This new review updates the NCUK publication ‘Putting Nature on the Map’, with the current Statements of Compliance replacing those published in 2014, and uses the best publicly available data that PAWG members could find. It reflects changes since the original assessments were published in 2014 and the rationale for any changes in our assessments, in part driven by new guidance coming from the IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas.
It is the intention of the PAWG to revisit these assessments on a periodic basis, and we invite comments and the submission of data to inform subsequent revisions. We would welcome any data or evidence from you that would help us to refine our analyses. Please contact us through IUCNUK.PAWG@wwt.org.uk.
You can see the PAWG responses to the government 2022 and 2023 consultations on the Landscapes Review, the Nature Recovery Green Paper Environmental Targets, OEP Review and a letter to the Secretary of State on the 30 x 30 target below:
CONTACT THE NCUK PAWG Chair:
IUCNUK.PAWG@wwt.org.uk
IUCN NCUK assessment of protected area management effectiveness (PAME) in the UK (2018)
The IUCN National Committee UK (NCUK) prepared an analysis of the data (as provided by UK protected area stakeholders in 2017) on protected area management effectiveness covering terrestrial and marine protected area designation types across the UK (not including in the UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies). This was used to improve the UK’s international reporting into UNEP-WCMC’s Global Database-PAME (GD-PAME). This analysis can used as a baseline in order to measure future status and trends in PAME in the UK, and to facilitate improved understanding of the concept and importance of management effectiveness based on IUCN international standards and guidelines.