Of crucial importance for biodiversity conservation and ecological connectivity, the Municipal Conservation Units (UCs) promote sustainable tourism, recreation, healthy living, healthy integration between humans and nature, provide services to urban ecosystems, and have a great cultural value of local communities.
In this sense, the UCs are the focus of the Acceleration Program developed in the context of the Local Protected Areas Project, which aims to promote an entrepreneurial and innovative look at the administration of municipal protected areas, based on intense learning about management instruments and financial sustainability. And it aims to strengthen the administration of municipal protected areas and the expansion of their biodiversity conservation capacities. When considering that a large part of these areas is inserted in urban contexts, the aim is to promote them as assets for local sustainable development.
The work encourages municipal managers to think about which activities can enhance UC management, presenting examples and developing a development plan through a structural review and making use of planning tools. More than reviewing the strategic guidelines and their territorial development models, participants are encouraged to transform the plan into local actions that aim to put into practice what has been structured, always considering participatory governance in the territory.
ICLEI strategically supports local and regional governments that prioritize healthy environments, in which air, water, soil, and all ecosystem services that support life and health are protected and nourished. In this sense, the Acceleration Program strengthens and concretizes, in partnership with the municipalities, the concrete benefits in the management, conservation, and recovery of biodiversity.
The spirit of the program is to bring to the public management the concepts of entrepreneurship that are practiced in the world, we hope that the Acceleration Program gains global scale and shows the benefits of green areas in the urban environment and in the coexistence of human beings with nature”, says Rodrigo Perpétuo, executive secretary of ICLEI South America.
UCs selected for the program in 2021:
Augusto Ruschi Municipal Natural Park (São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil)
Municipal Natural Park Temple of the Pillars (Alcinópolis, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil)
Niterói Municipal Natural Park (Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Municipal Natural Park of Morros (Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Professor João Vasconcelos Sobrinho Municipal Natural Park (Caruaru, Pernambuco, Brazil)
Tabuleiro Municipal Natural Park (Conceição do Mato Dentro, Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Watch the program launch event in full, which featured a master class by Claudio Maretti, South America Regional Vice President of the World Commission on Protected Areas (CMAP) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with the theme “Conservation Units, green areas, and municipal systems: what are the benefits?”.
The 2020 Acceleration Program
The program pilot, developed by ICLEI in conjunction with Sense-Lab, took place in 2020 in the Environmental Protection Area (APA) Capivari-Monos, in São Paulo (SP) and counted on the participation of APA managers, in addition to civil servants from the Municipal Secretariat of Green and Environment (SVMA), civil society and various actors relevant to the local context. Know more.
The Local Protected Areas Project
The Local Protected Areas Project aims to contribute to improving conditions for local governments to conserve biodiversity through effective and equitable management of protected areas and other conservation measures. Its measures focus on strengthening capacities and governance at the local level; promote the role of local governments in the effective management of protected areas and other conservation measures through legal or institutional frameworks; and disseminate the benefits and challenges for the management of protected areas by local governments at the local, state, national and international levels.
The project is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, in partnership with ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with political counterparts from the Ministry of Environment of the Brazil (MMA), Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MinAmbiente), Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment (MAE) and Peru’s Ministry of Environment (MINAM), as well as local governments in the four countries. Learn more about the project.