Source: Seychelles Nation - 04.09.2006
Seychelles' principal secretary for Environment, Dr Rolph Payet, has been invited by the world's foremost conservation organisation, IUCN (the International Union for Nature Conservation), to become a founding member of the Senior Advisory Group for the World Commission on Protected Areas.
The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) is the world's premier network of protected area expertise. It is administered by IUCN's Programme on Protected Areas and has over 1,000 members, spanning 140 countries.
WCPA's international mission is to promote the establishment and effective management of a world-wide representative network of terrestrial and marine protected areas as an integral contribution to the IUCN mission.
WCPA works by helping governments and others plan protected areas and integrate them into all sectors; by providing strategic advice to policy makers; by strengthening capacity and investment in protected areas; and by convening the diverse constituency of protected area stakeholders to address challenging issues. For more than 50 years IUCN and WCPA have been at the forefront of global action on protected areas.
The activities of the WCPA-Marine programme are conducted on national, regional and global levels and are intended to increase the capacity of management institutions and practitioners while building a sustainable network of globally-representative marine protected areas. On the national level, WCPA-Marine is sharing knowledge directly with practitioners and providing them with tools and information on MPA management.
Regionally, WCPA-Marine is strengthening its networks and building better communications between its members world-wide. On the global level, WCPA-Marine is heightening the importance of MPAs for the preservation of marine biodiversity and sustainable use of biological resources and the communities that depend on them through global programmes such as World Heritage and the International Coral Reef Initiative.
In this new capacity, Dr Payet is expected to represent small island states and advise on the work programme for implementation of activities to support the development of marine protected areas and marine protected area networks.
