Organisers: IUCN WCPA-GSG, Geoheritage Specialist Group; ProGEO, The International Association for the Conservation of Geological Heritage; CPG-SGE, The Geoheritage Commission of the Spanish Geological Society; SEDPGYM, Spanish Society for the Defence of Geological and Mining Heritage.
Direct and indirect human impacts on the planet present huge challenges for a sustainable future. They include climate change, biodiversity loss and delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, among others. Conservation and sustainable use of geoheritage has a key part to play in addressing these challenges. Geodiversity underpins the characteristics, functioning and evolution of terrestrial and marine ecosystems at all scales from the local to the whole planet. Geodiversity also delivers vital ecosystem services through its influence on landscape, habitats and species, economic activities, historical and cultural heritage and people’s health and well-being. Furthermore, understanding the physical environment and lessons from the geological record are fundamental to informing climate change adaptation and sustainable management of natural resources, including the land, water, coasts and seas.
Considering the variety of pressures and threats, conservation and management of geoheritage is essential to:
1) preserve the ‘memory of the Earth’ and its geoheritage values;
2) maintain the physical template for habitats and species and the abiotic ecosystem processes without which biodiversity could not exist and ecosystem services would be compromised;
3) protect the environmental archives that provide the knowledge base for informing ecosystem management, recovery and adaptation to climate change, among others.
This thematic session examines what this entails and requires in practice. It outlines key principles and analyses the challenges ahead, including the Key Geoheritage Areas (KGA) initiative, overcoming barriers to more integrated nature conservation, and mainstreaming geoconservation into nature conservation policy and practice.
IUCN’s World Conservation Congress (WCC) 2020 adopted Resolution 074 on 5 November 2020, and, amongst its operational paragraphs, this requests the Director General of IUCN and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) to: “...support the development of a detailed study envisaging the establishment of a future IUCN initiative on Key Geoheritage Areas, as a complement to the existing Key Biodiversity Areas programme, in order to protect geoheritage sites of global conservation significance and move towards more integrated nature conservation”. The IUCN Members who proposed this Resolution and will guide the thematic session, with input from the IUCN Secretariat focal point for this resolution (The Head of Heritage and Culture), have established a working group to develop the requested study, including proposals for the Key Geoheritage Areas Guidelines. During the thematic session, we will explain what this initiative entails, which will be submitted for decision to the IUCN General Assembly in Abu Dhabi in 2025.