This delivers better support and management of protected areas which ensures the
FUTURE PROTECTION & CONSERVATION OF NATURE.
Often, due to political choices, Protected Areas find themselves in economic and political turmoil. Budget cuts regularly affect all aspects of the Protected Areas’ communities. Naturally, the ability of organisations to remain part of a European network is challenged.
EUROPARC’s leadership requires vision, courage and patience to continue to serve the needs of its members. New partnerships and new ways of working will always need to be found: this is necessary to continue the international cooperation that the network has delivered in its first 50 years, to fulfill aspirations and to provide the networking services, advice and support that have generated the successful contributions to nature conservation across Europe.
Having initially benefited from early founding benefactors, the young EUROPARC soon had to learn to find its own financial feet. Membership fees were and remain the founding rock upon which the entire Federation is built. Retaining and growing the membership across the wide European Protected Areas and landscape community is an ever-present requirement. Members themselves are almost exclusively financed from sometimes fickle public funds, there to provide public goods for society. Ecological impoverishment walks hand-in-hand with economic stagnation and depopulation.
Yet, EUROPARC believes that we can revitalise our rural economies, especially in our most sparsely populated areas, by putting Protected Areas caring for nature at the heart of a green economic renaissance.
EUROPARC has always been open to change and embrace new thinking and ways of working. With the division of the past over inhabited parks long gone, it was with pleasure that EUROPARC accepted a request from Fednatur to integrate into the Federation. Ignance Schops then President said:
“The largest organisation of periurban parks joins EUROPARC, bringing new advice and knowledge, but especially new visions, new voices and new values. EUROPARC is open to cooperate with other organisations that work on the same sustainable development strand”
- Ignace Schops, EUROPARC President 2014 - 2021
“FEDENATUR is born again within a big project that allows us, deliberately and consciously, to bring its background of identity, expertise and its visions for the future, within the big house of EUROPARC – a big, shared house of which we are proud to become part of. What we are doing today is not the end of a path, but rather the opportunity to transfer our expertise, our professional knowledge and our visions within a wider context and within an organisation that has broader horizons”
- Roberto Della Rovere, President of FEDENATUR 2017
Fedenatur responded:
Fedenatur has brought new members and new impetus to the organisation and ensured EUROPARC represents and supports parks working for nature, from the edge of our cities to the wildest seas and mountains.
In the 21st Century, new means of financing and how we manage our nature are being explored. Ethical green financing, especially major funding from public and private investment, is needed in order to secure the future of our vital Park’s infrastructure. Carbon funding needs to be done properly and managed in a way that will instill public and community confidence.
EUROPARC has always forged new relationships with different sectors and will continue to do so with the finance sector, to put in place a robust framework, a working model, that would steer investment into our Protected Areas as the core of large scale transformational ecological, climate and economic regeneration.
“Our natural capital … the best banking company in the world”
As we were very active to widen our network and build bridges with all partners and stakeholders in society, we started to translate nature into a language that decision-makers & entrepreneurs could understand.
Proving that nature conservation benefits the local economy was a mechanism that could help. Not as “the” language, but as extra evidence … We learned a lot about the methodology of Metsahallitus Finland.
A lot of research has been done over the years, and we can easily state that “one euro invested in nature benefits 10 euro the local community”.
- Ignace Schops, EUROPARC President 2014 - 2021
Drawing on EUROPARC's extensive and committed membership of Protected Areas, the Junior Ranger programme aims to ensure the acceptance of the Protected Area in their region.
Making sure young people have a role in that, has been an important component of our work.
Investing in our future isn’t only a matter of euros, but of people, and especially our young people. In 2002, EUROPARC created the Junior Ranger programme. This has grown to a well-established network.
JR Camp Lahemaa, 2019
JR Camp Lahemaa, 2019
Grundtvig project
on voluteering, 2011
Young people can make a great contribution to their local community when encouraged to participate in nature orientated events. By bringing young people and Rangers together, we want to enable young people to respect and care for their local Protected Area, whilst also learning the valuable role Rangers play in the conservation of nature.
Appreciating the work of Rangers in our parks is a link EUROPARC forged with the Ranger community as far back as the early 1980’s: this is a significant relationship that remains into 2023 and beyond.
Grundtvig project
on voluteering, 2011
Young People can be part of something bigger, Ailish explains why...
EUROPARC attended the World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia in 2014, issuing a call and a promise to put young people at the heart of our work. Thereafter, the Youth Representative post inside the EUROPARC Council was created. Laura Peters (NL) and Leonardo Cerno ( IT), both former junior Rangers and Youth+ers, have served so far.
Leonardo tells us that EUROPARC is a blast!
Junior Rangers though have a habit of growing up! In 2012, at the JR camp in Triglav National Park Slovenia, the experiences of young adults having grown up in the Junior Ranger programme became apparent. It was obvious that EUROPARC needed to harness that energy and passion to provide an international space for young adults to continue to be connected to their Protected Areas and grow in leadership.
The Youth+ programme was born, developed and co-created with the young people themselves.
With their own conference in 2013 and the 2015 Youth+ Camp, in the Aiguestortes i Estany de Sant Mauricy National Park, they said “We want to be heard”. In Spain, the youth elaborated that they wanted to “Take the lead from Nature” and created a film “Too Old is Too Late” - you can hear this in their own words.
Through a Leader funded grant, Youth were brought together to formulate the EUROPARC Youth Manifesto: A Call to Action for rural areas to ensure young people have a say in and can contribute to their future: a future they see centred on a well-managed, functioning protected landscape as a catalyst for renewal.
Our Junior Ranger and Youth programmes hopefully inspire young people to be connected with nature throughout their lives and into whatever career they choose. Some may, and indeed have, chosen a path into nature conservation. EUROPARC strongly believes that young professionals have a vital role to play in caring for Europe’s natural heritage and supporting them to connect to and learn from the wider parks network is vital.
For over 20 years, the EUROPARC Federation, with support from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S awarded three Alfred Toepfer Natural Heritage Scholarships to promising young conservationists, who are committed to working for the benefit of Protected Areas. The aim of the scholarships was to enhance international cooperation and to advance the quality, innovation and European dimension of Protected Area management.
Agne Jasinaviciute said of her study trip to Scotland and England in 2018:
“The study trips have been very rewarding, not only broadening my horizons as a specialist working in Protected Areas [in Lithuania], but also provided many new friends in nature conservation”.
- Agne Jasinaviciute
Find out what other Alfred Toepfer Scholars learned from their study trips.
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