Geodiversity as a precious national resource: A note on the role of geoparks
Introduction
From the economic point of view, the geological environment is considered traditionally as a "container" of industrial and energy resources, such as iron ore, coal, and oil. However, it has become clear in two past decades that there is yet the other precious resource linked to this environment, namely the geological heritage. The latter is the entity of unique (very rare or very typical) geological features that are valuable for the society and require conservation (cf. Prosser et al., 2006; Henriques et al., 2011; Wimbledon and Smith-Meyer, 2012; Prosser, 2013; Bruno et al., 2014). Geological heritage has been discussed already in the terms of the resources policy, particularly, by Cairncross (2011), Ruban (2012), Wimbledon and Smith-Meyer (2012), and Tiess and Ruban (2013). The recent works of Jaeckel et al., 2016, Jaeckel et al., 2017 are also relevant to this discussion. Modern management of the geological environment is impossible without heritage value consideration.
The central concept in the modern theory of geological heritage is geodiversity. Different (even very contrasting) meanings of the latter have been proposed (Bradbury, 2014, Brilha, 2016, Brown et al., 2012, Crawford and Black, 2012, Erikstad, 2013, Gordon et al., 2012, Gray, 2013, Habibi and Ruban, 2017, Knight, 2011, Necheş, 2016, Nieto, 2001, Pereira et al., 2013, Plyusnina et al., 2016, Ruban, 2010, Ruban, 2011, Serrano and Ruiz-Flaño, 2007, Serrano and Ruiz-Flaño, 2009, Solarska et al., 2013, Stanley, 2001, Thomas, 2016, Zwolinski, 2004). Generally, geodiversity can be understood as either number of types of geological features on a given territory or quasi-philosophical category relevant to the people's admiration of the geological uniqueness, complexity, and beauty (but these two definitions are not mutually excluding). Anyway, geodiversity is an important and economically-valuable resource for the society. It can be used for scientific investigations, education, and tourism. All three bring evident socio-economic benefits, both direct and indirect. Combination of different geological features on the same territory permits more complex research programs, offer excellent opportunity for student field excursions, and attract geology amateurs. All these activities, especially geotourism, bring real economic benefits to the local communities.
Similarly to mining, benefits from the geodiversity can be obtained via its effective exploitation for the scientific, educational, and tourism purposes. The UNESCO Global Geopark network appears to be very suitable approach for such an exploitation. Geoparks are established to provide adequate conservation of unique geodiversity localities (Eder, 2008, Farsani et al., 2011, Farsani et al., 2012, Farsani et al., 2014, Henriques et al., 2012, Lazzari and Aloia, 2014, Ruban, 2016, Štrba et al., 2016). In fact, the very existence of a geopark stresses the importance of the area from the geodiversity point of view. Moreover, a geopark offers infrastructure for research, education, and tourism. Generally, the exploitation of the geodiversity resource is the most efficient in the form of geoparks. Presently, more than a hundred of geoparks are established in a few dozens of countries under the auspice of the UNESCO (Fig. 1). However, it should be remembered that the geological resource exploitation is important, first of all, to countries. The present paper is aimed at examination of the role, which the global geoparks play in the representation of geodiversity on the national scale. The basic conceptual idea is as follows: if all geoparks serve the exploitation of the geodiversity resource, the geoparks of any given country should represent the national geodiversity fully in order to make this resource more precious to the society.
Section snippets
Material and method
The current knowledge of the UNESCO global geoparks is summarized on the official web-page of this network (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/earth-sciences/unesco-global-geoparks/list-of-unesco-global-geoparks/). Many countries boast by the one or two geoparks, which cannot represent their national geodiversity fully. However, there are several countries with a bigger (> 5) number of geoparks. These are China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and United Kingdom (
Results
The geoparks of China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom differ significantly (Table 2). Some represent the only dominant type, and some represent several dominant types. Moreover, the combination of the types within the geoparks and within the countries are also different. However, the geodiversity serves as a precious resource in all cases, which can be demonstrated with two examples, namely the Hong Kong UNESCO Global Geopark in China and the Cabo de Gata-Níjar
Policy implications
If geodiversity is a precious resource, its management (including exploitation via geopark creation) requires well-justified policy-making. The international policy is clear, and it is reflected in the official documents and plans of the UNESCO Global Geopark network. However, development of the national policy is also necessary because countries can receive significant direct and indirect socio-economic benefits from the geodiversity resource exploitation (especially from the rising activities
Conclusion
The present study allows making four general conclusions:
- 1)
the geoparks in the countries with their big number contribute to the exploitation of the national geodiversity resource via research, education, and tourism activities;
- 2)
the exploitation of this resource is incomplete because of the incomplete representation of the geological heritage types in the geoparks of these countries;
- 3)
the special policy aimed at efficient exploitation of the geodiversity resource in the form of geoparks should be
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully thanks the journal editor and the anonymous reviewer for their support and helpful recommendations, as well as W. Riegraf (Germany) for his help with literature. This study was funded by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation Project 17-17-01229 (Head Yu.A. Fedorov) and the Permanent Leading Researchers Project 5.5791.2017/6.7 (Head Yu.A. Fedorov).
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