Parks of the Future: Protected Areas in Europe Challenging Regional and Global Change protected areas in Europe challenging regional and global change p d/ Thomas Hammer, Ingo Mose, Dominik Siegrist, Norbert Weixlbaumer (eds.)

There has been an unmistakeable boom in parks in Europe since the 1990s.

Over a fifth of the continent is now protected using designations such as regional nature parks, national parks, UNESCO biosphere reserves and World Heritage sites. This is a direct response to climate change, the decline in biodiversity, increasing consumption of resources, urbanisation, urban sprawl and demographic change, which continue to challenge the regions of Europe.

Parks are key to the protection of nature and the conservation of cultural landscapes, but increasingly, they promote sustainable development.

The authors' experiences of tackling the challenges of regional and global change in parks is analysed and selected case studies deal with key issues of current protected area policy:

How do parks address the pending challenges and what successes have they had?

What are the pioneering approaches of spatial planning and regional development?

Which forms of park management and governance are most promising?

This richly illustrated book also discusses which tasks will be assumed by parks in the future and what role parks may play in promoting sustainability.

Introduction: The New Role of Protected Areas in the Age of Globalisation, Global and Regional Change, and Sustainable Development

Section A: Approaches coping challenges of global and regional change

• The resilience concept and spatial planning in European protected areas development facing challenges of change
• Parks and climate change: Challenges to the protected area landscape and emerging policy and management responses
• Protected areas confronted by urbanization processes: Challenges and operative perspectives
• Parks as societal mirrors of the 21st century
• Protected areas at the interface of political systems: Rregional governance arrangements on the example of the Austro-Hungarian nature park Geschriebenstein-Irrotkö
• Nature Parks in Germany facing societal change: Experience from three Nature Parks in the Federal State of Brandenburg
• New challenges for managing sustainable tourism in protected areas: A Scandinavian perspective
• Regional change management and collaborative regional governance as approaches tackling regional and global change in parks? Lessons learned from the Swiss model of parks of national significance

Section B: Case studies and good examples to cope global and regional change

• An innovative or adaptive management model of Protected Areas?
• French Regional Nature Parks and Climate Change
• What role can parks play for sustainable development in Germany?
• Sustainable development in England’s National Parks: case studies in responding to socio-economic change
• A New British Biosphere: Brighton - Transecting City, Countryside and Coast
• Parks and Landscape: Land Use Plan Experimentations for Biodiversity
• Recent trends and future challenges of protected areas in Southern Spain
• Socio-Demographic Changes in and around Protected Areas and Management Responses: Case Studies from the Carpathians
• Protected area governance in Azerbaijan

Section C: Syntheses – Challenges to cope with regional and global change

• Critical view of a park manager: How to cope with regional and global change?
• Critical view of a park federation manager: How to cope with regional and global change?