The IUCN UK National Committee’s Protected Areas Working Group
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, 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 advisers 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.
You can see the PAWG responses to the government 2022 consultations on the Landscapes Review and the Nature Recovery Green Paper below:
Email contact: IUCNUK.PAWG@wwt.org.uk
Origins – Putting Nature on the Map (PNOTM) is a project to identify and categorise the places in the UK where the conservation of nature and landscape comes first – effectively, finding which places meet the IUCN’s definition of a protected area. IUCN’s new guidelines on protected area management categories were published in 2008. In the light of this advice, Nik Lopoukhine, Chair of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), asked IUCN NCUK to revise and expand the application of IUCN protected area categories in the UK and to improve coverage of UK protected areas on the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). In response to this request, IUCN UK set up the PNOTM project.
National Handbook – PNOTM began in 2011 with the establishment of the NCUK 
Protected Areas Working Group (PAWG). This group, comprising members of the WCPA, oversaw the production of a UK National Handbook to assist in the application of IUCN Protected Area Categories to UK sites. This key document is available here .
2014 report – In the following three years and using this guidance, the PAWG published its PNOTM 2014 report and recommendations and this is available here.
In addition to the National Handbook, two further innovations were adopted:
• A UK Protected Area Assessment Panel of experts from the IUCN WCPA to provide
peer review and rigorous debate around implementing the categories
• Statements of Compliance (SoCs) for each type of site (see links to individual SoCs below), to provide a common format for a critical review of the legislative and policy context, governance and management objectives relevant to a site meeting the IUCN protected area definition.
The results are significant, with some designated areas found to not meet the IUCN
definition, and other sites previously not identified that did. The report provides
new data and statistics in this respect.
Next steps – Thanks to a grant from WWF-UK, the next stage of the PNOTM project began in 2016. This stage will be pressing ahead with implementing the recommendations from the report produced in 2014, with particular emphasis on: finalising accurate datasets from UK NGOs; a focus on marine protected areas; protected area management effectiveness; and exploring the values of private and community conserved protected areas. A report on progress is expected in the autumn of 2017.
The UK Protected Areas Assessment Panel is looking for some new Members to consider and evaluate the UK datasets. If you have knowledge of the UK protected area landscape and would like to contribute your expertise and join this small group of WCPA Members, please contact chris.mahon@iucn.org.uk for more details.
Statement of Compliance for Special Areas for Conservation
Statement of Compliance for Special Protection Areas
Statement of Compliance for UNESCO Biosphere Reserves
Statement of Compliance for UNESCO Geoparks
Statement of Compliance for National Nature Reserves
Statement of Compliance for National Parks
Statement of Compliance for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
Statement of Compliance for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (and ASSIs in NI)
Statement of Compliance for National Scenic Areas
Statement of Compliance for Heritage Coasts
Statement of Compliance for Butterfly Conservation reserves
Statement of Compliance for John Muir Trust properties
Statement of Compliance for National Trust properties
Statement of Compliance for Plantlife reserves
Statement of Compliance for RSPB reserves
Statement of Compliance for Woodland Trust sites
Statement of Compliance for Scottish Wildlife Trust reserves
Statement of Compliance for Wildfowl and Wetland Trust reserves