A Wilderness Approach under the World Heritage Convention

Cyril F Kormos,Harvey Locke,Tim Badman,Brendan G Mackey,Jodi A Hilty,Bastian Bertzky,Elena Osipova,James E.M Watson,Tilman Jaeger,Yichuan Shi,Russell A Mittermeier

doi:10.1111/conl.12205

Abstract

AbstractThe World Heritage Convention could make a bigger and more systematic contribution to global wilderness conservation by: (1) ensuring the World Heritage List includes full coverage of Earth's wilderness areas with outstanding universal value and (2) more effectively protecting the ecological integrity of existing World Heritage sites. Here, we assess current coverage of global‐scale wilderness areas within natural World Heritage sites and identify broad gaps where new wilderness sites should be identified for inclusion in the World Heritage List. We also consider how existing mechanisms under the Convention can improve the ecological integrity of existing sites by expanding or buffering them, and by promoting connectivity between World Heritage sites, between World Heritage sites and other protected areas, or both. We suggest that the Convention should consider a new mechanism called a “World Heritage Wilderness Complex” to facilitate a wilderness approach. Finally, we map three landscapes and one seascape to illustrate how World Heritage Wilderness Complexes might be implemented.

Highlights

Despite a burgeoning global human population, human influence varies around the world and there are many places where natural ecological and evolutionary processes operate with minimal human disturbance (Mittermeier et al 2003)
While much has changed since Mittermeier et al (2003) published their global map, with improved data resulting in the identification of new wilderness (e.g., 228 Conservation Letters, May/June 2016, 9(3), 228–235 Copyright and Photocopying: C 2015 The Authors
Sixty-three (28%) of the 228 natural World Heritage sites overlap with one or more of the 24 global-scale wilderness areas identified by Mittermeier et al (2003), including the 2 million hectare Okavango Delta and the 5.3 million hectare Amazon Conservation Complex World Heritage sites

Summary

A Wilderness Approach under the World Heritage Convention

Cyril F, Bertzky, Bastian, Jaeger, Tilman, Shi, Yichuan, Badman, Tim, Hilty, Jodi A, Mackey, Brendan G, Mittermeier, Russell A, Locke, Harvey, Osipova, Elena, Watson, James EM. Mittermeier, Harvey Locke, Elena Osipova4, & James E.M. Watson. Keywords Climate change; conservation; World Heritage; wilderness

Introduction

Findings

Conclusion