Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

Starting in March 2020, many urban protected areas, as well as other protected areas, were temporarily closed to the public to control the spread of COVID-19 among visitors, staff, and neighbors. Calls to reopen these places have increased, and in some cases this has led to the responsible agencies allowing full or limited public access, usually with new rules. 

On what basis should protected areas be kept open, closed, or reopened? 

The usual answer is “When it’s safe to do so,” but what does that mean? Often the answer is “The science will tell us.” But science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can give us a basis for decision-making but cannot tell us the difference between right and wrong.
 

In this case, much of the science is uncertain. In early July 2020, the steering committee of the IUCN WCPA Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group looked into the issues surrounding protection of people from COVID-19 in urban protected areas. We found there are still many unknowns about the virus and the disease. There are disagreements among scientists and public health experts about how the virus is transmitted, including by aerosols. Few studies have been carried out on outdoor transmission, so it is difficult to define a safe distance for social distancing. There are questions about face masks, toilets, and other factors. Guidance from leading public health organizations is inconsistent and conflicting. And, of course, there are different circumstances in different countries and cities. 

We concluded it would be difficult to make a cogent statement about this except to urge caution. Thus, the precautionary principle comes into play. A formal definition of the precautionary principle, adopted by UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, reads: “When human activities may lead to morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm. Morally unacceptable harm refers to harm to humans or the environment that is threatening to human life or health, or serious and effectively irreversible, or inequitable to present or future generations, or imposed without adequate consideration of the human rights of those affected.”
 

Specialists in ethics are producing guidelines for dealing with issues surrounding COVID-19. A good example is An ethics framework for the COVID-19 reopening process, issued by the bioethics institute at Johns Hopkins University.  It centers on methods of analyzing tradeoffs between shared values such as well-being and freedom. See also Ethics guidance and resources on COVID-19 from The Hastings Center.  

In looking into the risks involved, I found this article especially useful: Reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, Science, 26 June 2020. The lead author is atmospheric chemist Kimberly A. Prather, a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Urban protected areas, defined as protected areas situated in or at the edge of larger population centers, have particular challenges in responding to COVID-19. They are distinctive from more remote protected areas in several ways, including that their urban visitors tend to be much more diverse ethnically and economically and tend to lack experience of wilder forms of nature. For details, see this page of the website. 

Although outdoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is usually less of a risk than transmission indoors, the number of annual visits to individual nature reserves in and around metropolitan areas can be substantial, even in the millions. In some cases, these include visits by numerous tourists from other countries, increasing the risk of spreading the virus more widely.

In urban areas, "parks" is a word that is easily misunderstood. On one hand it refers to conventional city or town parks with lawns, flower gardens, playgrounds, and sports fields. On the other hand, it is used for more natural and wilder places called protected or conserved areas  This is a crucial distinction when considering how the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 spreads in public spaces. Activity can be a lot harder to monitor in nature reserves than in conventional city parks, where visitors are more visible and can be discouraged from gathering. 

Four final points:

Don’t assume visitors will respect rules about social distancing, face covering, congregating, and human waste. Whether they do so will depend largely on local circumstances and differences in social norms.   

Beware of misinformation and disinformation: see Fact-checking under Online Resources, above.

Draw on expertise in crisis communication. According to Peter Sandman, one of the leaders in that field, the most common communication mistake being made about COVID-19 is "over-reassuring" the public that everything will be all right. Sandman says this can make frightened people even more frightened, or it can have the opposite effect of leading them to ignore or abandon precautions they ought to be taking. He has more advice on his website.

Prepare for the next time. Public health experts like to tell us “It’s not a question of if but when” the next outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic of infectious disease will happen. Agencies responsible for protected and conserved areas should maintain contingency plans for these events just as they do for responding to other emergencies.

-- Ted Trzyna, Chair, IUCN WCPA Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group. Revised 23 November 2020                                    [Graphic: U.S. National Park Service]