In Europe, ICCAs mostly relate to the idea of the Commons in its broadest sense: the collective governance of land, water and other natural resources.
The issues
Throughout Europe you can still find, today, consuetudinary patterns of collective governance of natural resources by local communities. And yet, the development of modern state bureaucracies and the expansion of market economies have tended to disrupt traditional governance systems based on consuetudinary rules, replacing them with private property and management by state administrations. As a result, in many countries, the economic, environmental and social values of ICCAs are nearly invisible and certainly not sufficiently recognised and respected by state administrations or the general public. Besides generally invisibility and neglect, other threats to ICCAs in Europe include aggressive land use changes (such as large-scale mining and industry, tourism and big infrastructure developments), erosive EU policies (for example, resulting from the promotion of intensive, large-scale, fuel-dependent farming), rural depopulation, and cultural loss.
Strategies and responses
To respond to these threats at local, national and European levels, communities governing ICCAs have begun networking among themselves and developing participatory processes in an effort to design common strategies for confronting these problems. These communities are working to increase the visibility of ICCAs and gain a wider recognition of their social, economic and environmental roles.
The ICCA Consortium has been active in supporting participatory processes to establish national and Europe-wide networks of ICCAs. The Consortium gathers basic information related to ICCAs in various countries and has been specifically exploring the ICCA impact of EU agricultural policies. It promotes national and international recognition of the environmental, social and economic values of ICCAs.
The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) held a regional workshop from February 20-24th, 2018 with Tero Mustonen of Snowchange and ICCA Consortium Member in attendance to facilitate the description of Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs) in the Baltic Sea, during which the ILK and ICCAs were largely discussed.
Snowchange has established a second ICCA in Finland. It is a 110-hectare wetland Linnunsuo, located in North Karelia. This action strengthens the capacity of local communities, hunters, bird watchers and other stakeholders to use (I)CCA as a method for conservation of significant sites in Finland.
A national level governance assessment was recently held in Tbilisi, Georgia, with IUCN leading a three-day workshop convening key stakeholders in Georgia. Representatives of … Continue reading “Protected area governance in Georgia”
Throughout 2017 Snowchange, Greenlandic partners, Skolt Sámi and the Danish NORDECO partnered on a Nordic Council -sponsored project “eXchanging Knowledge”, to find new, direct ways of expressing Indigenous and local-traditional knowledge, as well as support direct exchanges between hunters, fishermen, women, reindeer herders, managers and researchers.
