africa: World protected areas top 100,000 mark but climate change threatens many

The number of environmentally protected areas across the globe adds up to more than 100,000, the United Nations announced Tuesday, as leading environmentalists warned global warming was already causing irreparable damage to many sites. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) published a new database of protected areas at the opening of a 10-day congress on world parks, that kicked off in South Africa's eastern port city of Durban Monday.