Durban+5 and beyond : locating and integrating youth perspective

The importance of engaging young people in protected areas and nature conservation has become an undisputed agenda for the international conservation community, but it remains a challenging one.This is an important agenda to assess as we attempt to reflect on the Durban World Park Congress and forsee the next steps. The paper traces the background of youth engagement within the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) It portrays youth as an innovative and diverse constituency with the critical knowledge to advance nature conservation in protected areas (PAs), highlighting the perceptions, visions and key messages of youth to global PA leaders.It identifies the key issuesin the discourse of engaging youth in protected ares and recommends concrete actions for the future