World Conservation Union (IUCN)

The World Conservation Union brings together over 980 members from 140 countries, including States, government agencies and various kinds of non-governmental agencies, in a unique world partnership for conserving nature.

IUCN’s mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. Through its six Commissions,IUCN draws together over 10,000 expert volunteers in project teams and action groups, focusing in particular on species and biodiversity conservation and the management of habitats and natural resources.

UNESCO’s links with IUCN date back to 1948, andthe initiative of the French Government, the Swiss League for Nature and UNESCO (under its first Director-General, biologist Julian Huxley) to organize a conference at Fontainebleau (France). This was the conference that gave birth to the International Union for the Protection of Nature and Natural Resources (IUPN), since renamed IUCN (the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, now known as the World Conservation Union). Over the five decades that have elapsed since then, IUCN has grown to become the world’s leading non-governmental organization devoted to the conservation of nature, with not only a large number of NGO members but also with some 90 Member States. Its programme includes many activities carried out in close co-operation with UNESCO. Two of the most striking of these co-operative ventures concern the development of the biosphere reserve concept and the promotion and advisory functions of IUCN for the natural part of the World Heritage Convention.

Particularly through its World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), IUCN has made available the expertise of its specialists in a whole series of tasks related to the planning and management of biosphere reserves, including the work of the Advisory Committee of Biosphere Reserves. IUCN was prominently involved in the seminal meetings on biosphere reserves held in Morges (September 1973), Minsk (October 1983) and Seville (March 1995), and over the years a number of joint workshops and meetings have been convened and collaborative studies undertaken. Topics addressed have included the classification of the world’s biogeographical provinces, guidelines for the application of the biosphere reserve concept to coastal systems and the relations between biosphere reserves and the IUCN system of protected area management categories. Several workshops on biosphere reserves have been organized as part of successive World Conservation Congresses, such as those in Caracas in 1992 and Montreal in 1996. In Montreal, a thematic Vice-Chair for Biosphere Reserves was for the first time established within the WCPA. At the regional level, contributions relating to biosphere reserves have figured in a number of IUCN regional meetings. And at the site level, IUCN and its regional and national associates have played important roles in collaborating with national institutions in developing management plans and conservation activities, at such biosphere reserves as Boloma-Bijagós (Guinea-Bissau), Aïr et Ténéré (Niger, joint IUCN-WWF project) and Sinharaja (Sri Lanka).

For the World Heritage Convention, since the Convention came into force in the early 1970s, IUCN has provided specialist technical expertise concerning natural and mixed properties proposed by States Parties aspotential World Heritage sites. Its role in the Convention is written directly in the Convention text itself, and includes training as well as technical advice and support. IUCN’s continuing role in the implementation of the Convention is reflected in several recent issues of its monthly bulletin World Conservation, including listings of World Heritage conservation achievements for the periods 1992-1995 and 1996-2000.

http://iucn.org