The Futures of Privately Protected Areas

This report aims to raise awareness about this type of protected area and provide a framework to show how privately protected areas can and should be reported nationally and internationally. The report is based on an extensive literature review, discussions with privately protected areas specialists, an expert workshop and 17 commissioned country reviews.

Privately protected areas deserve far greater recognition and support than is the case at the moment. To date, the large majority of protected areas have been created on state-owned lands and waters. Whilst such initiatives are invaluable, and unprecedented in their scale and in the commitment shown by governments, they will not be enough to achieve the CBD targets on their own. There are already tens of thousands of areas which could be considered as privately protected areas around the world, with more being set up all the time. This report provides guidance on applying the IUCN definition of a protected area to a privately protected areas and recommends: a privately protected area is a protected area, as defined by IUCN, under private governance (i.e. individuals and groups of individuals; non-governmental organizations (NGOs); corporations – both existing commercial companies and sometimes corporations set up by groups of private owners to manage groups of PPAs; for-profit owners; research entities (e.g. universities, field stations) or religious entities).

This report was funded by the Linden Trust for Conservation and has been developed in collaboration with the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the Secretariat of the Convention CBD.