Linking Tourism & Conservation (LT&C) will be actively involved in at least 4 different events at the IUCN World Conservation Congress, taking place on September 1-10 in Hawaii. The Theme of the IUCN Congress 2016 is Planet at the crossroads. The topic of Tourism and Protected Areas will be one of the main cross-cutting issues.

The following dates below are when LT&C will take an active role during the WCC-events:

September 2, 17:00-19:00, Room: 311-13 (Knowledge Café; #WCC_10385):

What can the Public Protected Areas learn from Private Protected Areas?

Private protected areas (PPA) have existed for centuries and now emerge as an important part of the puzzle for biodiversity to be conserved in the long run. However, there is still resistance from the public protected area sector to recognise their value as partners. This session aims to identify opportunities and ways to stimulate the development of genuine exchange and collaboration between two sectors traditionally skeptical about one another but both key to increase to protect biodiversity.

September 3, 17:00-19:00, Business and Biodiversity Pavilion (#WCC_12148):

Best Practices in Sustainable Tourism: Guidelines, Solutions, and Examples

In this Pavilion event, the IUCN-WCPA Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group (TAPASG), IUCN Global Protected Areas Programme, and Linking Tourism and Conservation (LT&C) join force to showcase sustainable tourism best practices in protected areas and conduct an open forum in which the audience will exchange ideas about promoting and replicating best practices in sustainable tourism and visitor management, scaling up its impacts on global conservation agenda.

September 4, 08:30-10:30, Room: 310 (Workshop; #WCC_10225):

Nature at scale that matters: Innovative Approaches for Long-Term Funding of Protected Areas 

Participants will have:

• A greater understanding of the scale and scope of the current failure to adequately fund protected areas and the impact this failure has on biodiversity
• Increased awareness of innovative approaches and how they can be used to address the funding gap
• A better understanding of what key global funders are doing to secure protected areas and what is required to have impact for nature at a scale that matters

September 5, 17:00-19:00, Room: 311-7 (Knowledge Café; #WCC_9790):

Environmental, economic and social impacts of polar tourism. 
The Polar Regions are particularly threatened by human activities and anthropogenic risks.
Tourism activities in Polar Regions over the last 15 years have experienced an unrivaled growth. The objective is therefore to inform about positive and negative impacts of tourism activities in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. The effects can be environmental, economic and/or social. The question will be how to maintain a sustainable tourism in the Polar Regions.

The main issue for LT&C to participate at WCC is:

• To help together with partners promoting best practices in the fields of tourism and protected areas
• Seeking to inspire others that such examples are getting popular and replicated
• To collect ideas and learn from the experiences of others about developing  INCENTIVES that our LT&C-Examples are getting learned from and replicated.

Theme of the IUCN Congress 2016  Planet at the crossroads:

We live in a time of tremendous change, the nature and extent of which is the subject of intense debate around the world. At the heart of this debate is the clash of immediate human needs with their long-term impacts on the planet’s capacity to support life.

With a timeframe of 15 years, the world has committed to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals – an ambitious agenda for improving human living conditions for all. There is a real sense of urgency in this call to action, as many believe there is a closing window of opportunity to effect meaningful change in Humanity’s trajectory. Our future will be decided by the choices we make now.

The current debate is framed by two competing narratives. One is a pessimistic view of our future, which claims that it is already too late to avoid catastrophe, and therefore we must now focus on survival and recovery. This leaves people in despair. The other is a stubborn optimism arguing that Humanity has faced and overcome many great challenges in the past and will continue to do so. This risks indifference and denial.

But there is a viable alternative approach – one that stresses that nature conservation and human progress are not mutually exclusive. Facing tremendous forces of transformation such as climate change and socioeconomic inequality, there are credible and accessible political, economic, cultural and technological choices that can promote the general welfare in ways that support and even enhance our planet’s natural assets.

For the alternative path to be credible and viable, we need new partnerships across the planet, between governments, NGOs, conservationists, scientists, consumers, producers, urban planners, entrepreneurs, grassroots and indigenous organisations and financial backers. Each partner holds a vital piece of the puzzle – the knowledge, the tools, the resources. We need to bring these pieces together, and collectively complete the greatest puzzle ever attempted: to secure Nature’s support systems so that Humanity and the greater community of life may continue to prosper on Earth. This is our collective challenge for the next 15 years, and this is the invitation that the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2016 is offering to the world.

For more information about the World Conservation Congress go to the IUCN website.

If you are interested in the events LT&C is involved in: