Belgrade Open School and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF Serbia) jointly organized a workshop on Climate Change and Protected Areas on Tuesday, September 10, 2019. The workshop brought together representatives of protected areas managers in Serbia and experts in the field of nature protection and climate change, to discuss jointly how protected natural areas, plant and animal species, can be better protected and adapted to changing climatic conditions in Serbia.

The welcome speach of the organizers was followed by a presentation by Professor Vladimir Djurdjevic from the Faculty of Physics, on the topic of climate change, with special reference to Serbia. Continuous rise in average temperature, change in rainfall and droughts, and more frequent natural disasters, are more than enough reasons to worry about. Throughout the presentation, the focus was also on global efforts to limit the rise in global temperature through reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

This was followed by a presentation on the results of a study conducted under the project "Protected Areas for Nature and Humans", focused on the adaptation of protected natural areas to changing climatic conditions. The basic findings of the research indicate that climate change is sporadically mentioned in the management plans for protected areas, and that they are generally recognized as a threat, without specifically planned measures to be taken to better protect plant and animal species and their habitats.

There was a discussion among the participants of the workshop, through which past experiences were exchanged regarding adaptation to changed climatic conditions in protected areas, mapped key challenges and what steps could be taken towards better adaptation. The participants agreed that climate change is a key challenge to be addressed as soon as possible, that the consequences are already felt and reflected on virtually all species, and that there is a change in the territorial distribution of species, a change in the flowering time of plant species, the occurrence of invasive species, and others. They also considered the adequacy of the current planning and legal framework for managing protected areas, taking into account climate change. For these reasons, they emphasized the importance of new research and joint data collection. The place of climate change has also been considered in other documents relevant to protected areas, such as conservation studies, and the promotion of ecosystem services. The key recommendations arising from the discussion were the introduction of new ways of managing protected areas, as well as stronger cross-sectoral cooperation for better results.

The workshop is organized within the project "Climate Change and Protected Areas", which is being implemented by BOS with the support of the World Wide Fund for Nature Serbia. The result of the project will be a study on climate change in selected protected areas from the perspective of management plans, as well as recommendations for more effective adaptation of protected areas to changed climatic conditions.

Photo source: Belgrade Open School