Assessment of individual PAs’ contribution to environmental conventions
Full Solution
Thaya Valley National Park, Austria
Volker Mauerhofer
Through a 10-step system, the Convention-Check method applies a bottom-up approach to assess the contribution of large-scale protected areas to the implementation of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), allowing to overcome deadlocks in MEA implementation, contributing to improved global PA governance. The Convention Check was carried out in Thaya Valley National Park, Austria, demonstrating that the park contributes significantly to implementation of 5 MEAs.
Last update: 02 Oct 2020
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Context
Challenges addressed
MEA implementation deadlock and lack of MEA integration into national law
1. MEAs are nationally often hardly or not implemented although signed and/or ratified. The methodology shows how PA-managers can contribute to improved implementation.
2. National legislative bodies often do not much more than copy and paste the MEA into legislation, if at all. The paper shows an approach without need to change the law to improve implementation.
Location
Merkersdorf, 2115 Ernstbrunn, Austria
West and South Europe
Process
Summary of the process
The building blocks identified in this document combine to create an innovative ten-step process ‘Convention-Check’, a bottom-up approach which identifies and analyses the contribution of large-scale protected areas to the implementation of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAS), which are traditionally introduced from the top down. The example of the Thaya Valley National Park used in this study already identifies the significant impact of the Convention Check towards improved protected area governance, and demonstrate that this method is transferrable and replicable.
Building Blocks
Selection of relevant MEAs and (sub-)national legislation
The first five steps of the ten step process are classified as preparatory. They provide a conclusive body of research in order to facilitate analysis of the impact of large-scale protected areas on the implementation of MEAs. Steps here include the selection of the relevant international and regional MEAs and the identification of the relevant national legal institutions, including administrative regulations at lower geographic levels. Strict criteria are applied to the selection process such as validity and regional coverage of the respective convention, and in the case of the Thaya Valley National Park certain conventions such as the Alpine Convention and the Ramsar Convention were not included due to the criteria and geographic location of the national park.
Enabling factors
• Careful consideration of the protected area’s criteria must be adhered to, to ensure that the most applicable conventions are chosen.
• In the case of the Thaya Valley National Park, certain legislation and administrative regulations were included to provide the legal framework for the national park, while others which were not as relevant were excluded.
• Workshops with in-depth interviews of park employees facilitated the drafting of Tables of Concordance (ToCs)
Lesson learned
• Selection of right conventions is crucial for the subsequent steps.
• Preparation of tables of concordance should not exclude any norm that could be addressed by the PA (these tables contain the relevant MEA-norms which are assessed upon their extent of national implementation).
Identify activities contributing to MEA implementation
After a preliminary assessment by the researcher, a workshop with the PA management is being held. The length is dependent on the number of MEAs as well as the number of active discussants. Tables were already prepared with implementation steps known to the researcher and drafts for recommendations. The content of the tables, as well as missing information, were discussed in detail. Discussion should take place in a spirit of openness and trust. The discussants from the PA management should be aware that results might be published (if planned).
Enabling factors
n.a.
Lesson learned
Engaged PA-managers can make a difference, but continued evaluation is necessary to ensure that recommendations developed are fully implemented.
• In case of transboundary PAs, all management authorities should be involved in those aspects and issues of a Convention Check that require transboundary cooperation in their later implementation.
• In case of multilevel-governance systems, some recommendations are developed that can only be implemented at other levels than the PA management agency. In case these levels are not involved in the implementation of a Convention-Check, they can be quite reluctant to implement the recommendations developed if these levels were not participating in the development.
• However, sometimes it is better to just implement a Convention Check as when higher levels would get informed about the planned Check in advance, they might intervene which can lead to its non-implementation.
Develop, discuss and evaluate PA management recommendations
Recommendations from the preparatory steps of the Convention-Check are given to the management agency, then are evaluated after an appropriate period of time, to assess their impact and largely address management effectiveness. Steps in this building block include assessing and quantifying the number of changes of measures/activities on management, administrative and legislative levels, assessing the causality between recommendations and evaluating the quantified changes in a qualitative way. Recommendations are provided to administrative and legislative bodies as well as to the PA in particular. Recommendations concern changes in legislation, administrative regulations as well as in particular in practical management decisions. One recommendation was for example to work on bats and now these species are among the flagship species of the park.
Enabling factors
Working closely with relevant organizations and societies such as the Thaya Valley National Park Society offers a productive way to assess relevant changes.
Lesson learned
n.a.
Impacts
Significant impacts have been shown using the Convention-Check method by the Thaya Valley National Park, demonstrating that a protected area can improve implementation of MEAs.One of these impacts is that more than 25 % of the recommendations developed were implemented after two years.
This method proved reliable to voluntary assessments of the current contribution of a large scale protected area to the implementation of international conventions and is replicable for identifying gaps in the compliance of local acts with international obligations.
The voluntary approach applied by the Convention-Check enables the identification of practical implementation measures, which may not otherwise be possible during a more formal compliance assessment.
Beneficiaries
park managers, protected area authorities (restricted by politicians) and courts involved in implementation cases.
Story
It was inspiring to see how the Convention Check brought bats into the focus of the National Park management.
After the implementation of the study on the occurrence of bats, the NP recognized the high value of the park for bats which are now a major research and visitor education topic in the park.
