DURBAN, South Africa: The fifth World Parks Congress closed on Wednesday in Durban with 2,500 participants agreeing to new commitments and policy guidelines for protected areas around the world.

Three important documents - the Durban Accord, the Action Plan, and the Recommendations - were endorsed at the end of the 10-day congress, which was held under the slogan: "Protected areas: benefits beyond boundaries."

The congress decisions will empower both the managers of protected areas and policy-makers around the world. With the Durban Accord and the Recommendations in hand, they can start a process with governments, institutions and organizations to turn their vision into reality.

The Durban Accord presents a new model for protected areas. It celebrates their role in achieving conservation and development aims as well as new participatory management strategies emphasizing the role of local communities to share the benefits from protected areas and take part in decision-making.

Packaged with the Durban Accord is the Durban Action Plan, a technical document that provides policy-makers with key targets and timetables for the protected area agenda.

"All other critically endangered and endangered species worldwide are effectively conserved in situ by 2008. All other globally threatened species are effectively conserved in situ by 2010," the action plan urged.

A number of initiatives were announced by scientists, government and indigenous leaders during the congress, pledging funding, political support and technical input to improve the management of 102,102 protected areas.

The congress addressed pressing problems within protected areas by identifying new sites for under-protected ecosystems, defining tools to improve management effectiveness, finding new legal arrangement and bringing new constituencies on board.

Achim Steiner, director-general of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), said the Durban congress offered participants a unique opportunity to exchange experiences, learn from each other and establish a common agenda.

Congress Secretary-General David Sheppard said: "The Durban Accord sets a new vision: one that is clear and one that is feasible for the world to implement. But more than that, it has created the energy and will to take this agenda for the next decade and put it to work."

Specifically, delegates put forward guidance to engage governments, the private sector, indigenous people, local communities and youth in protected areas to jointly safeguard the many benefits these areas provide to societies worldwide.

Mohammed Moosa, South African minister of Environment Affairs and Tourism, said the congress would serve as a boost to conservation in South Africa since it inspires more and more young people to be involved in nationwide conservation efforts.

"The congress has translated many issues such as sustainable livelihoods, sharing of benefits and the role of the private sector, that came out of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, into concrete goals and actions for the management of parks and reserves," he said.

A host of new protected areas were announced in countries such as Madagascar, Senegal and Brazil, covering well over 200,000 square kilometres. To top this, an excess of US$35 million was pledged for conservation both on land and sea.

The congress took place in the South African coastal city of Durban just one year after the World Summit on Sustainable Development, seven months before the next Conference on the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Malaysia and 13 months before the third IUCN World Conservation Congress in Thailand.

Despite global progress in the conservation of protected areas, specialists from 154 countries expressed concerns that many areas of irreplaceable and immediately threatened biological diversity have not yet been protected.

Many places which have been conserved over the ages by local communities, mobile and indigenous peoples are not given recognition, protection or support. Wild and natural areas outside of protected areas have halved in the last 20 years, and biological diversity in turn is on the brink of mass extinction.

Moreover, many proclaimed protected areas exist more on paper than in practice, especially in developing nations and in the marine realm. While 12 per cent of the world's land area enjoys protection, less than 1 per cent of the world's ocean, seas and coasts have protected status, exposing fisheries and rich storehouses of biodiversity to over-exploitation.