EUROPARC 2009
100 years of National Parks in Europe. A shared inheritance; A common future
Many thanks to all of you who joined us at a great conference in Strömstad in 2009. It was great to see so many of you there enjoying yourselves and also fantastic to talk to so many of you during the 4 days. We, the staff, are extremely pleased with the outcomes and the positive feedback that we have received from many of you during and after the conference.
Summary
Three Hundred people from 30 countries gathered from 8th – 13th September to celebrate 100 years of nature conservation at the annual EUROPARC Federation conference, hosted last week by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in Strömstad, Sweden.
This year’s conference was fittingly preceded by a High-Level Ministerial meeting, “Visions for Biodiversity beyond 2010 - People, Ecosystem Services and the Climate Crisis” and the inauguration of two transboundary national parks: Kosterhavet National Park, a marine national park in Sweden, and Ytre Hvaler National Park in Norway causing more press attention than usual for the conference.
Against this background around 300 individuals working in the field of protected area management or nature conservation enjoyed the great opening ceremony (attended by the King of Sweden on Wednesday 9th). The following morning enthralling keynote speeches from Achmed Djolaf , Pavan Sukdev, Tamas Marghescu, Peter Westman and Gordan Miller inspired and stimulated the delegates. These were then followed by a moving presentation by Kristin Biebel from the Bavarian Forest National Park (DE) about the EUROPARC Junior Ranger Network.
EUROPARC members gathered after lunch for an informative General Assembly which, among other issues and themes, saw the voting in of council member Dominique Leveque (FR) and the reelection of David Cameron as auditor for the Federation for the next year. The day finished with a series of side meetings and a great dinner at the Quality Spa & Resort Hotel.
Friday was excursion day and participants rose early to take part in one of a number of fantastic trips into the surrounding area by boat, foot, bike or even canoe. The weather was fantastic all day and the mood high as delegates returned in the evening for dinner.
The last day of the conference was also jammed packed with moderated full day workshops, also on a variety of themes. Delegates animatedly discussed topics with fellow practitioners concerning climate change, biodiversity, sustainable development and much more. The outcomes, which were given at the feedback session in the Plenary Session afterwards., will an analysed by EUROPARC and fed directly into the strategy and workplan to take forward actions.
Also at the plenary session the EUROPARC transboundary and charter awards were presented. Ian Jardine from the Scottish Heritage Trust ended the session with a summary of the conference themes and a conference message.
New friendship, contact and partnership were made that will help parks across Europe work to improve their effectiveness, by sharing experiences and learning for each other.
The highlight of the conference for many was the Gala-Dinner on the Saturday evening where we were treated to a performance by an Abba Tribute Band. The delegates were out of their seats and dancing around the tables even before the meal was finished. And the mood and dancing continued late into the night…
Further information
We will put the presentations and feedback from the workshops of the conferences and other events up onto our website as soon as possible and will send you the links to these as soon as they are up. More photos can be viewed at: http://karinbjork.se/europarc-staff . The English conference programme can be download below for reference.
Read more about the excursions and about the workshops including the feedback from them by navigating through the links on the right.
The conference report will hopefully be ready by the end of the year and will be sent out to all EUROPARC members and delegates of the conference. Before then we will be writing a short summary in this month’s e-news due to be released at the beginning of October and you will currently find a short press release on the news page of our website: www.europarc.org/putting-a-price-tag/
Please contact the Federation team for more information. Information about our conference in 2010.
Gallery
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