A bottom-up ‘Convention-Check’ to improve top-down global protected area governance

This paper introduces the so-called ‘Convention-Check’ as a new bottom-up approach of assessing the contribution of large-scale protected areas to the implementation of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) that are introduced from the top down. The assessment consists of three major sub-sequential parts: the current contribution of a protected area to the implementation of the MEAs, recommendations for improvements and – through an ex-post-evaluation – the impact of the recommendations provided. The Convention-Check is carried out in a total of ten methodical working steps. A very first application of the method is presented based on the example of an Austrian National Park. In this example, a Convention-Check was carried out using five MEAs and was evaluated after two years. The results show that there is great variability regarding the number and intensity of implementation measures already taken by the different levels of governance addressed. Potential reasons and perspectives for the example situation, as well as possibilities for future improvement of the method and its global application on large scale protected areas, are discussed. A significant and causal impact of the Convention-Check towards improved protected area governance is already shown by the Austrian example after two years. The Convention-Check combines different working methods from social as well as natural sciences in a new way. Its innovative approach is designed to overcome deadlocks in the top-down implementation of MEAs by means of bottom-up initiatives out of large scale protected areas, and aims to contribute towards improved global protected area governance.

► I provide a method for assessing the contribution of protected areas to MEAs.
► Its application is shown on the practical example of one National Park.
► The park's contribution to 5 Multilateral Environmental Agreements is assessed.
► The park contributed already to more than half of the assessed norms of these MEAs.
► Based on recommendations, significant improvements within 2 years were found.