The Royal Commission for AlUla, IUCN unveil new conservation assessment tool

Image: RCU

The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) have launched a new conservation assessment tool.

The new IBEX V1.0 tool is a comprehensive yet easy-to-use system for evaluating and reviewing protected areas, with ongoing conservation work checked and measured for its alignment with critical standards laid out by the IUCN Green List certification.

Recognised as the global best practice for the comprehensive, fair, and effective protection of threatened flora and fauna, the Green List standard provides expert guidance to help environmental and conservation programs achieve sustained, and sustainable, results in diverse protected areas.

The new tool allows managers to submit detailed information for self-assessment, with criteria applied across the 50 core areas that need to be met in accordance with best practices, including  governance, design and planning, management effectiveness and conservation outcomes

IUCN experts helped develop the tool

The tool was developed alongside IUCN’s experts with the goal of simplifying and streamlining what was previously a complicated and complex method of assessment for conservation work that required multiple platforms and processes.

Used for the first time in AlUla by RCU’s Wildlife and Natural Heritage team, the tool showed how technology can be harnessed as part of fieldwork by protected area managers, allowing them to document, store, study and assess in detail the progress and effectiveness of a project.

Highlighting RCU’s ongoing leadership in the global conservation space, the tool acts as a roadmap for projects to achieve IUCN’s Green List status.

The vast Sharaan Nature reserve in AlUla is currently in the process of reaching the required standard for inclusion on the Green List.

IUCN will continue to develop the software, releasing further enhancements and functionalities with Arabic being introduced to users in the coming months.

 Dr Hany El Shaer, regional director, IUCN – Regional Office for West Asia, said: “The IUCN – with its collective knowledge through the World Commission on Protected Areas – oversees the only global standard for protected areas, the IUCN Green List of Standard for Protected and Conserved Areas, offering guidance for area-based conservation to help achieve just and effective nature conservation.

“Thanks to the support of the Royal Commission for AlUla, we have further developed a web-based platform that helps protected and conserved areas managers to integrate complex levels of information in an intuitive and user-friendly interface that helps them reaching the highest standard in protected area management while reaching the global IUCN certification.”

Mohammed Zaarour, Nature Reserves director at RCU, said: “By streamlining and simplifying the process of assessment into one, easy to use portal, conservation efforts can be reviewed, managed, and maintained, with a clear roadmap towards alignment with IUCN’s Green List standards with long-term accountability.”