This year’s World Environment Day focusses on biodiversity. On this World Environment Day 2020: we need Protected Areas to battle the ongoing biodiversity loss.

In 1972 the United Nations General Assembly designated June 5th as World Environment Day. Governments, businesses, celebrities and citizens are engaged to focus their efforts on a pressing environmental issue. This year’s theme focusses on Biodiversity. All over the world, you can participate in online events to celebrate World Environment Day here and check out #ForNature.

Nature provides us with food, fresh water, air for us to survive and thrive. We are depended on it for our survival as it provides us with the essential infrastructure that supports life on Earth and human development. This means, that to take care of ourselves we must care for nature. Biodiversity is an essential part of this life system. If we want to secure a healthy life on our planet, we need to secure biodiversity.That is why it is Time For Nature.

Currently, nature is pushed to its limits. Through deforestation, encroachment on wildlife habitats, intensified agriculture and our influence on a changing climate, we are accelerating biodiversity loss. With this, Earth’s ecosystems on which we depend will collapse. However, if we listen to nature now, we can change the tide.

World Environment Day 2020: We need Protected Areas!

EUROPARC has been advocating on nature’s behalf since its very start. We recognize that we need to give space to nature to secure our own livelihoods. In an ever urbanised Europe, Protected Areas provide green spaces that counter the high level of biodiversity loss we are currently experiencing.

Now more than ever, we need Protected Areas as drivers of biodiversity, as all life on this planet is founded on it.

EUROPARC welcomes, the European Commission’s recognition on the importance of Protected Areas in its new biodiversity strategy. Member States will be in charge of designating  Protected Areas and strictly Protected Areas and will define conservation objectives and measures for all Protected Areas. Here, EUROPARC Federation and its members should have a key role to play to provide our expertise to our own Member State in order to ensure a participative and representative process. We urge the commission to listen to offer adequate support in order for this ambitious plan to work.

EUROPARC will contribute to support the work of Protected Areas, to harmonize and improve their management in order to collectively recover and restore the conservation of Nature in Europe. Together we can, and must, combat biodiversity loss and secure a healthy planet for future generations.

Have a look at our knowledge hub for helpful resources on a wide range of topics.

We are happy to say that the TransParcNet Meeting 2020, originally planned in June and postponed for Covid-19 crisis, is now confirmed on 22 – 25 of September!

It will take place in the EUROPARC youngest Transboundary Area: Binntal Nature Park (CH) / Alpe Veglia Devero Nature Park (IT).

We will speak about a very important topic for cross-border relationships:  “PARKS AND CULTURAL HERITAGE -Ways to a closer involvement and to a better identification of people with their parks”

ALL INFO are available on this page.

Places are limited so priority will be given to EUROPARC TB Areas but all cross-border areas are welcome, of course!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER (VERY IMPORTANT)

Do you want to know more on the previous editions? Have a look here!

See you there!

Sustainable Tourism in the Covid world.

What is the response from the Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas?

EUROPARC will host a “webinar-workshop” looking at the impact of COVID across our Charter network, our Parks, our business partners and our visitors.

• 8th June 2020
• 10:00 CEST
• Register here: https://webinar-workshop.gr8.com/

This forum will seek to gather information about the current situation, identify the network’s needs and consider what the messaging should be to ensure sustainable tourism remains not just viable but is a better alternative in the new tourism market.

The webinar will be in English, but we welcome participants from across the Network.

As we hope to have an interactive session, please have your smartphone handy!

Watch our film A Sustainable Journey in advance of the webinar.

To remind ourselves, perhaps, why we do this!

Moving forward – consultations for a new EUROPARC Federation Strategy

Our strategy is the mechanism through which we implement our mission and vision, ensuring the work of the Federation is valuable to our members. It provides a framework of what EUROPARC as an organisation wants to achieve so we can plan effectively and ensure adequate support to the work for Protected Areas in Europe.

2021 will be the final year of our current strategy which we started in 2015 after extensive consultation with our members.

EUROPARC is a member’s association. You, the members are vital to shape and prioritise how and what the organisation delivers. Your opinion is important to us. Your contribution, with concrete inputs from the field, will feed into our new Strategy. We want to hear from you, to make sure our efforts and energy go directly into areas prioritised by you, this is why we started online consultations for a new EUROPARC Federation Strategy, open until the 7th of August.

Access the questionnaire here:

English, French, Italian, German, Spanish

The consultation process:

In order to guarantee broad participation, there are a number of opportunities to ensure you can share ideas, thoughts, needs, expectations and proposals.

• The Strategy Consultation is a wide process, started already in 2019 with some initial online sounding questions. Results were shared and discussed during our General Assembly in Latvia.
• We are now launching an online questionnaire, available in different languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Please take the time to fill this out. It should take around 20 minutes and will help us take into consideration what your organisation needs from EUROPARC and how we can best provide support. Note that we are looking for one answer per member. An email was sent to the contact person of each organisation with the link to fill in the questionnaire. Please answer the questionnaire by the 17th of July. Note that the questionnaire is to be filled exclusively by EUROPARC members, and the membership number will be asked. If you haven’t received the email, have any questions, or indeed, need to know your Member id, please drop us an email to members.europarc@europarc.org.
• In parallel with the online questionnaire, we are currently running a number of online consultation workshops, organised with the support of our Sections. Workshops are being held in the first language of the section hosting. A great opportunity to share your views and ideas for the future of our organisation.  See the full calendar of online workshops and find the one that suits you best:

Access the questionnaire here:

English, French, Italian, German, Spanish

What happens next?

• Over summer we will start elaborating the data collected via the online survey and during the course of the consultation workshops;
• In September a specific workshop will take place with Council Members, Section Representatives and Directorate to analyse data, discuss further inputs and start prioritising main areas of work;
• In October at the General Assembly, first outcomes of the consultation will be shared.
• In March 2021 a first draft of the new strategy will be prepared and then circulated for review across the network.
• A final version will then be produced and sent out to members, to be voted on at the General Assembly 2021.
• The new strategy will then enter into force in January 2022.

The input of our members is of great importance to us. We thank you in advance for taking the time to contribute to our new strategy and we look forward to hearing your recommendations!