5 Takeaways From Huge Once-a-Decade Gathering on World's Protected Areas
The World Parks Congress drew 6,000 delegates to Australia. Here's what we learned.
SYDNEY—Must conservation and economic development always be locked in combat, with no hope for one unless the other is suffering?
At the World Parks Congress, a once-a-decade global forum on protected areas that drew more than 6,000 delegates from 170 countries to Australia this week, influential voices argued again and again that the typically opposing forces must be linked in tandem.
Forty percent of the global economy is based on natural resources, so the need to maintain natural capital is a no-brainer, various speakers said.
The theme was introduced by Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, who spoke about the need to move past the old paradigm in remarks at the opening of the eight-day congress.
"Traditionally,
