The global protected area estate is the world’s largest ever planned land use. Protected areas are not monolithic and vary in their purpose, designation, management and outcomes. The IUCN protected area category system is a typology based on management objectives. It documents protected area types and is increasingly used in laws, policy and planning. As its role grows, the category system must be reactive to opinions and open to modifications. In response to requests from members IUCN undertook a 4-year consultation and recently published revised guidelines for the categories. These made subtle but important changes to the protected area definition, giving greater emphasis to nature conservation, protection over the long term and management effectiveness. It refined some categories and gave principles for application. Debates during revision were intense and highlighted many of the issues and challenges surrounding protected areas in the early 21st century. There was a consensus on many issues including the suitability of different governance models (such as indigenous and community conserved areas), sacred natural sites, moving the emphasis of Category IV from habitat manipulation towards species and habitat protection, and recognition of legally defined zones within a protected area as different categories. However, there was considerable disagreement about the definition of a protected area, the appropriateness of some categories with extensive human use, the possibility of linking category classification with biodiversity outcomes, and recognition of territories of indigenous peoples. We map these debates and propose actions to resolve these issues: a necessary step if the world’s protected area network is to be representative, secure and well managed.

Management of protected areas must adapt to climate impacts, and prepare for ongoing ecological transformation. Future-Proofing Conservation is a dialogue-based, multi-stakeholder learning process that supports conservation managers to consider the implications of climate change for governance and management. It takes participants through a series of conceptual transitions to identify new management options that are robust to a range of possible biophysical futures, and steps that they can take now to prepare for ecological transformation. We outline the Future-Proofing Conservation process, and demonstrate its application in a pilot programme in Colombia. This process can be applied and adapted to a wide range of climate adaptation contexts, to support practitioners in developing positive ways forward for management and decision-making. By acknowledging scientific uncertainty, considering social values, and rethinking the rules that shape conservation governance, participants can identify new strategies towards “future-oriented conservation” over the long term.

Protected areas are regarded as the most important tool in the conservation toolbox. They cover > 12% of the Earth's terrestrial area, with over half of this designated since 1970, and are thus a unique example of governments and other stakeholders consciously changing management of land and water at a significant scale. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has a global programme to complete ecologically-representative protected area networks, and this is driving the creation of large numbers of new protected areas. But there is also growing criticism of protected areas because of the social costs of protection and doubts about their effectiveness. We acknowledge this criticism but believe that it is over-stated and applied to a protected area model that has already been replaced by newer thinking. As protected areas are becoming more complex in concept and more complicated in management, we review the six most important changes affecting them over the last 2 decades: (1) a new protected area definition with more emphasis on nature conservation; (2) a plurality of management and governance models; (3) acknowledgement of wider protected area benefits beyond nature conservation; (4) greater social safeguards for protected areas; (5) evidence that protected areas are effective conservation tools; and (6) a new emphasis on larger protected areas, transboundary protected areas, connectivity conservation and landscape approaches. We conclude by considering fresh challenges as a result of policy changes and the global criminal wildlife trade, and consider the potential of the forthcoming 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress.