Paper Parks: Why They Happen, and What Can Be Done to Change Them

That goal illustrates the main point of the report: that is, paper parks occur when there is ineffective management. If management could be made more effective — primarily through identifying and addressing the threats that face each protected area — then paper parks would be changed into effective parks. “The immediate threats to...protected areas are in turn the result of several underlying causes,” writes the report. “Understanding the nature and importance of these causes is essential for effective action to reduce the problems.” Marc Hockings agrees. Co-chair of the Management Effectiveness Task Force of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, Hockings says it is essential for practitioners to address both the causes of threats and the capacity of managers to respond to them. “I think we have known for many years that most protected area systems are underresourced, but it is only recently that we have started to get some better measures of the extent of this lack of resources,” he said. “Management effectiveness assessment can help, both in identifying threats and in assessing the adequacy of resources to respond to those threats and other management needs.”