The Collaboration
The purpose of the Protected Areas Collaboration for Learning and Research (PAC) is to bring people together to learn and grow capabilities to better care for nature and protected areas in the Asia-Pacific. We bring together a network of voices, sectors, practices and cultures, with shared meaning and purpose.
PAC had its origins in Tasmania, Australia and has grown through several phases following initial and extended support from a wide range of individuals, organisations and agencies, including private donors and a three-year grant from the Australian Government awarded at the 2014 IUCN World Parks Conference in Sydney.
PAC’s initial formal partnerships were with universities throughout Australia and later the University of the South Pacific. A much wider group of partners and stakeholders now includes environmental and Indigenous non-government organisations.
PAC offers access to a range of professional development short courses as well as university-based courses including Graduate Certificate and Masters courses. It also offers scholarships, mentoring and a community of practice, focused on professionals and community-based conservation practitioners working on protected areas and other area-based conservation activities, as well as university students and graduates.
In October 2021 we finalised our strategic plan for the coming three years.
Our Strategic Statement
At the heart of our strategy is addressing important and urgent needs in protected area conservation.
Protected areas are a key pillar for global conservation, and there is widespread effort to increase protected area coverage of the planet to 30% by 2030.
This signals a call for more effective and inclusive stewardship of these areas. We believe that justice, equity and diversity are essential for better protected area outcomes, and that protected area management needs to better reflect the interconnectedness of people and nature.
Education and capacity building need to be scaled up and made more accessible and inclusive.
We also believe that the personal learning process must be transformative to enable deep long-lasting change in the service of all. Mobilising the best available knowledge is fundamental to conservation, and must include Indigenous knowledge of lands & waters.
The Protected Areas Collaboration has been established to grow this capability. We bring together a network of voices, sectors, practices and cultures, with shared meaning and purpose.
By 2025, we aim to have:
Co-designed & delivered 5 new short courses with academic institutions & other delivery organisations
Delivered an annual collaborative leadership program
Grown cross-cultural understanding and knowledge sharing through annual delivery of a range of learning opportunities with Australia’s First Nations people
Hosted a forum on protected areas & an annual webinar series on critical issues
Grown networks and a community of practice across the Asia-Pacific through course participation and follow-up, and new cross-sectoral partnerships
Built a robust enduring collaboration for the long-term provision of courses, events, knowledge networks and partnership-building
Continued to offer at least five scholarships per year for PAC courses
Our Joint Venture
With a Joint Venture partnership established at the start of 2021, PAC is entering a new phase in its growth, with its first Strategic Plan created in October 2021. When the Plan’s objectives are achieved, PAC will have developed new partnerships to deliver protected area capacity building opportunities in Australia, the Pacific and Asia.
The Joint Venture partners are the Tasmanian Land Conservancy and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute. Each partner contributes a representative to the Executive Council. Two committees operate under the Council and the chairs of each of those committees are also on the Council. The Nature Conservancy has an MOU with the JV and also contributes a member to the Council. The Executive Council has an Independent Chair, and the inaugural Chair is Jane Hutchinson. PAC’s Council and committees include a diverse and experienced group of professionals engaged with various aspects of protected area management.
As a Joint Venture arrangement, PAC is not a registered business and acts on behalf of its Joint Venture Partners: the Tasmanian Land Conservancy and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute. Each of these organisations is a Registered Environmental Organisation, and also a company limited by guarantee in Australia. Each of these organisations is thus able to receive grant funds, enter into employment arrangements and do all other things to enable receipt for and payment of services.
Protected Areas
In 1962, at the first World Conference on National Parks in Seattle, Washington, there were just 9214 protected areas identified for the world, and just 52 years later, in 2018, there were over 238,563 protected areas from 244 countries and territories documented in the World Database on Protected Areas.
This 20th and 21st-century transformation has meant that by 2018, just under 15 per cent of the world’s terrestrial and inland waters, just over 10% of coastal and marine areas within national jurisdiction, and some 4% of of the global ocean are covered by PAs (IUCN).
It has been a remarkable achievement. It is one of the greatest peaceful land-use and sea-use transformations in human history. But this success is a work-in-progress - in this rapidly changing world, there is an urgent need to make looking after these protected areas more effective, inclusive and collaborative.
The Opportunity
Throughout the region there are multiple IUCN Category I-VI protected areas (e.g. national parks, public and private conservation reserves, Indigenous Protected Areas, marine protected areas, and other conservation areas) along with community-managed conservation areas (now referred to as ‘Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures’) cared for and lived in by people over the generations.
With long-standing and mounting contemporary pressures on these areas and their custodians, it is vitally important to provide both a means to professionalize – and an opportunity to provide a career path for – managers, community members and others engaged in looking after protected areas.
The Logo
About the logo – the three allied elements reflect the coherent coupling of the associated areas of natural/cultural heritage protection, stewardship and conservation management, while referencing the first three universities involved in the provenance of this trail-blazing initiative.
The members link and overlap to form a complete circle, representing the global framework of protected areas in Australia, Asia and the Pacific.
